


CALABASAS MANIFEST

by pastel



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Violence, Cults, Dark, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Epistolary, Hollywood, Horror, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mild Gore, Mild Sexual Content, Texting, Vaping, feel free to ask me to tag potential triggers !!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:41:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 58
Words: 25,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21787669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastel/pseuds/pastel
Summary: Well, that's certainly one way to use the term 'cult classic'.
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Mark Lee
Comments: 86
Kudos: 124





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hi this was originally for spookfest's cult day but i never finished sjdkfl so now im posting it in chunks w/ hopes that this will motivate me to write it all !! idk what to put in notes ever but pls enjoy < 333 
> 
> oh! one non-content warning is that i haven't watched the actual event horizon movie bc i cant stand scary movies so things might not be entirely accurate on that front hahaha

**_“EVENT HORIZON 2110”_**  
Screenplay by Billy Moon  


**AIRLOCK HALLWAY - NIGHT**

A nude MAN sits in front of the airlock window, back to the camera. Almost translucent, flickering. His skin is pale, but a dark scar circles his throat like a necklace. Dr. Do stands behind him.

**DR. DO**

(Disbelieving)  
Baekhyun?

He does not answer. He remains still. Dr. Do moves to touch him, but does not breach the gap, still afraid.

**DR. DO**

Baekhyun? Can you hear me? Baekhyun…

He reaches out this time, rests a hand on his shoulder. Baekhyun does not move. Dr. Do catches Baekhyun’s reflection in the airlock window - there’s something wrong with his face. He pulls on the shoulder, to turn Baekhyun around.

**BAEKHYUN**

I’m so cold…


	2. Chapter 2

**THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER**

**SPIDERMAN SAVES MARK LEE**

_06/30/20 7:32 AM PST_

It looks like Hollywood changed its mind about everyone’s favorite Canadian-Korean teen superstar, Mark Lee. He was our favorite when Disney Channel was still good, and his hit single ‘High-School Rapper’ is a certified 2000s bop, but after he got hit with an underage drinking charge at eighteen our boy’s been going off the rails. It got him sent to rehab just a few months later, and ever since then he’s been laying low. He did a few TV show cameos, so we thought he was gone from the big screen forever. It turns out we were wrong, because Mark’s surprise casting as Peter Park in the new Spiderman reboot, _Spiderman: Homecoming_ , has done really well. The movie’s Hollywood premiere ran last night, and the night ended to thunderous applause, thanks to Mark’s acting chops. The now-21 year old says he’s living drug and alcohol-free, and _READ MORE ON THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER…_


	3. Chapter 3

**[ TO: Mark’s iPhone | FROM: John Seo ]**

  
_Monday 8:46A.M_. Mark??? Where are you  
 _Monday 8:51A.M_. If you’re skipping again…  
**Read** 8:55A.M.

  
 _Monday 9:02A.M_. We need to talk, Mark. If you want to be serious about acting, you need to show it.  
Delivered


	4. Chapter 4

**ariel <3s renjun** _@renjooni_ · 26d  
**a guide to huang renjun**  
everything you need to know about sm boygroup NCT’s lead vocal, dancer, and c-pop soloist huang renjun!

**ariel <3s renjun** _@renjooni_ · 26d  
name: huang renjun  
nicknames: injeolmi, hwang injoon (korean name), shoulder gangster  
birthday: march 23rd, 2000  
hometown: jilin, china  
debuts: the 7th sense (nct), my first and last (nct dream subunit), my page (chinese solo)

**ariel <3s renjun **_@renjooni_ · 26d  
renjun debuted in NCT on april 8th, 2015 with their debut mini-album THE 7TH SENSE. he’s a part of the vocal line (doyoung, yuta, jungwoo, jaehyun, and renjun), the foreign line (jaehyun, yuta, and renjun), and the maknae line (renjun and jaemin)

**ariel <3s renjun** _@renjooni_ · 26d  
he also debuted under NCT’s subunit, NCT dream, with fellow member na jaemin in 2017. his most recent comeback has been as a soloist in china. his debut album, GRADUATION, was released in march of 2019.

**ariel <3s renjun** _@renjooni_ · 26d  
after the massive success of renjun’s career in china, he’s been cast in thai-american director ten leechaiyapornkul’s upcoming reboot of cult classic ‘event horizon’. his role has not been officially announced yet.


	5. Chapter 5

_Now calling…_ **Ten**

There’s the telltale _buh-beep-beep-beep-beep_ of a Facetime ringing, and then the _woosh_ as Ten picks up. 

“Ten, I really appreciate you letting me hop on as Dr. Do in the new movie, it’s like, a big fuckin’ favor and I’m grateful, really,” Mark says, pausing to take a hit from his juul.

Ten laughs in the silence, sharp as bottle shards on the side of the Pacific Coast Highway. “Is Johnny holding you at gunpoint, making you say these things to me?”

Mark rolls his eyes, blowing out a grand cloud of watermelon-flavored smoke. “ _No_ , but fuck, man, why’d you have to cast that idol dude? No offense, but like, I’m not even gay.”

“It’s typecasting, honestly, and our efforts to make the movie a little… more inclusive?” Ten offers, pixelated hand swirling the wine in his 144p glass. “Almost all of his other roles have been light-hearted romance things, your usual K-drama fare… if he didn’t practically look like a ghost already I’m not sure the casting team would’ve looked at his audition twice. Also, the Chinese production company who’s working with us was kinda adamant about it being him, for some reason.” 

Ten pauses, looking through his own phone at Mark’s twisted-up face. “I know you have complicated feelings about all that idol business, but listen - show some pity for the kid, okay? He’s just trying to break into the American industry and we’ve turned him into a gay demon-ghost in his first movie. In comparison? You have it _easy_.”

Mark hangs up after that.


	6. Chapter 6

Mark first sees him when he steps out of his trailer, makeup artists finished making him look even more sleep-deprived than he already is. Him, in this case, being none other than Huang Renjun. He doesn’t look quite like his photos - not that Mark’s been looking up his photos, but he might have stumbled across some twitter thread about Renjun last night, just to know what he was up against.

Renjun is wearing only a bathrobe, slippers on his feet. Mark knows what scene they’re going to film today. He knows, and it weighs him down with nerves and disgust and a thousand other feelings he feels guilty for. He still doesn’t understand why they cast him as Baekhyun, when Mark has been against it from the beginning.

“Hello,” Renjun greets him with a dip of his head, just a touch of an accent audible in those two syllables.

It shocks Mark out of his reverie, has him jumping back in surprise. Embarrassing. “H-hey! Shit, you scared me.” It’s almost more embarrassing that Mark’s hand automatically flies to his empty back pocket, where he usually keeps his vape, but Renjun has no way of knowing, so it’s okay. 

He really does look ghostly, now that Mark can get a good look at him. It’s the pale skin, or the papercut line of his collarbones, or his eyes, so dark and hollow they make Mark uneasy. Or maybe it’s just his makeup.

“I look forward to working with you,” Renjun says, in Korean, so it takes Mark a second to process. Before he can reply, though, Renjun lets out a little, “Ah!” of realization and the tiniest flush seeps past his thick layer of foundation. “Sorry,” Renjun starts again, in English this time. “It’s… habitual.”

For some reason Mark hadn’t expected such a word - _habitual_ \- to roll so easily off of Renjun’s foreign tongue, and the sound of it, the way it had tumbled out of Renjun’s mouth like an Olympian gymnast sticking the perfect landing, jumps and bounces around in his mind. He nods absently in reply, a soulless, “You’re fine, dude.”

Habitual, he thinks.

Renjun opens his mouth to say something else, but Mark is saved by the well-projected shout of one of Ten’s assistants - Kun, Mark remembers - “We’re starting!” 

Mark doesn’t start on set, so he waits for his cue.

Beside him, though, Mark hears the swoosh of fabric.

Renjun has dropped his robe, leaving him entirely nude under the eyes of the whole crew.

Mark forgot this was part of the scene.

He watches as Renjun walks - not proudly but not shyly, either - just _walks_ to his position by the fake window. All of his skin is that pale, then, the shadows of his vertebrae and the dimples on the low of his back turning a moody blue in the set lighting. One of the art direction assistants adjusts the way Renjun’s sitting, slightly.

Kun's voice: “Take one!” 

Mark eyes down the line of Renjun’s back.

He steps on set.

“Baekhyun?”


	7. Chapter 7

**_Property of Huang Renjun, do not open._ **

January 9th, 2017.

We had a free day today, even though it’s comeback time. Or, I guess, I had a free day. Taeyong, Yuta, Doyoung, and Jaehyun hyungs had to go film their youtube thing, Jungwoo went to go visit his family, and Jaemin had to go film something too, so when I woke up the dorm was empty.

I wanted to go and practice the dance for Limitless since I want to get better at my part, but I couldn’t find my key to the dorm, so I couldn’t leave. I thought I saw manager-hyung with it yesterday - I knew it was mine since it has the Moomin washi tape on it - so I asked him about it, but he told me I was being ridiculous and then he lectured me for losing my key. He took my phone as punishment for being so dumb and forgetful, which I guess is why I’m writing this right now.

I made lunch, watched some of manager-hyung’s current favorite drama with him, and then I decided to clean my room to try and find my key. I didn’t, but I did find the bracelet Jaemin bought me, so I guess it was kind of productive. I ended up practicing Limitless in my room - oh, I hope the sound didn’t disturb the managers. I had my headphones in, but I was probably stomping…

Oh! Manager-hyung just said he’d give me my phone back since it’s dinner time now, so I guess I’ll go… He said that my mom called me at three-ish. I should probably call her back.


	8. Chapter 8

**_NAME:_ ** Mark Lee

 _ **AUDITIONING FOR:** _Barney

 _ **DATE:**_ 2006

The recording is fuzzy, the result of poor camera quality. It’s zoomed in on the face of a young boy, cheeks full and eyes round. He stares at the floor shyly, the tiniest grin on his pink lips. “Mark,” a woman whispers off-camera, “Look at the camera, honey.” He does as she says, looks up with wide eyes. “Come on now,” the woman says again, and it’s then that he finally springs to life, hands coming to rest perfectly below his chest, the sweet, sweet sounds of _A Whole New World_ filling the room. A man’s voice, this time. “Thank you, Mark.” The clip ends.

_**NAME:**_ Mark Lee

 _ **AUDITIONING FOR:**_ Disney Channel

 _ **DATE:**_ 2010

A boy walks to the duct-taped ‘X’ in the middle of the room. “Uh,” His voice is still high-pitched, childish. “I’m Mark Lee, and I’m auditioning for the role of Jeffery Jung.” He adjusts his stance, clears his throat, flashes a glance down at the script in his hand. Immediately, his posture shifts - it’s still shy, but with a bumbling, adorable awkwardness. “Hey Kevin, will you come to my birthday party? It’s tomorrow, uh,” he flashes a well-planned glance up at the camera, the tiniest smile on his face, “tomorrow at seven o’clock.” The rest of the script is uneventful, but it’s not Mark talking - it’s Jeffery. He breaks character, bowing slightly. A woman’s voice, much later, just barely caught on the film: “Good job, Mark.”

_**NAME:**_ Mark Lee

 _ **AUDITIONING FOR:**_ SM Entertainment

 _ **DATE:**_ 2013

The room is entirely empty, the camera crystal-HD. The lighting is cold. One boy walks through the door, his strides long and confident. He makes his way to the center of the room. “Name and type of audition?” A faceless voice asks. “Mark Lee, vocal,” he replies, just as curt. He nods to an unseen gesture, and begins. It’s Justin Bieber’s Baby, but not quite - the pitch is a little off, his voice betraying unseen nervousness. “Sorry, lemme, just, uh, start over?” Mark’s voice cracks embarrassingly just as it hits ‘over’. He does little to hide the instant cringe that overtakes his face, but starts the song again. It’s not any better. “Uh,” Mark finishes, “Thanks, I guess.” The video ends to silence, nothing but the slightest sound of his feet shuffling out the door.


	9. Chapter 9

**[ TO: Mark’s iPhone | FROM: hyuck (stunt ♊) ]**

_Thursday 1:34PM_ im rly not supposed to be telling you this but Apparently kpop boy has meds  
 _Thursday 1:34PM_ not sure what kind but. i saw a little something Something during lunch break  
 _Thursday 1:35PM_ maybe you should pop a few and make my job a little easier huh  
 _Thursday 1:35PM_ also the fx makeup is FUCKING uncomfortable and i have to be in it longer than you do which makes no sense btw why the fuck did you take on this project again?  
 _Thursday 1:36PM_ im jk dude but seriously what are you so tense rn for   
Read 1:37P.M. 


	10. Chapter 10

“Um, excuse me?” 

_Fuck fuck fuck shit fuck oh god damn fuuuuck_. Mark’s brain blanks out.

Renjun’s voice, again, stupid singer-sweet. “Mark? What are you doing in my trailer?”

Mark’s hands are sweating, and he knows he won’t be able to get the bottlecap back on in time. He has to let it fall to turn around, its _clunk_ against the dressing-table counter incriminatingly loud in Renjun’s silence. At least he has a few of the pills in his hand - he has no clue what they are since the bottle label was in fucking _Chinese_ \- but it’s better than nothing.

“Ah, uh, hi, Renjun,” Mark offers him his red-carpet smile. He’s managed to bullshit his way through interviews with way too much shit in his system, so he should be fine doing this sober, right?

Renjun smiles back, just as sharp and artificial. “What are you doing in my trailer?” He asks again. Mark can already see his gaze stretching and bending as much as it can, as if to see behind Mark’s solid body.

“Just, uh, Johnny forgot something in here while he was, uh, talking to your manager and he had some other, like, studio business, so I said I’d, uh, pick it up for him,” Mark ends on a chittering laugh. It’s not out of character for him, not in the slightest, but he realizes that Renjun hardly knows him, so it just comes off as what it is: _nervous_. 

Renjun takes two steps forward, long strides for someone of his height, and it’s not like the trailer is that big and suddenly he’s _that_ much closer to Mark. “I don’t want to be, ahh…” His eyes dart to the corners of the room as if he’s searching for the word there, but it’s so played up Mark can’t help but think he's just being polite, “ _absurd_ , but I know you’re lying to me. Why are you in here?”

It’s at this point that Mark’s lizard brain takes over, as it so often does when there’s someone breathing against his collarbones and the possibility of a high waiting on the other side. He decides to stuff the pills in his mouth and make a run for it, leave Renjun confused but unable to do anything about it. He tries, he really does, but while he’s fast, Renjun is faster.

The pills are in his mouth but so are Renjun’s fingers. He bites down, instinctively, but Renjun doesn’t take his hand out. “Are those _my-?!_ ” That’s said in Korean, but Mark understands it quickly - it’s a phrase he’s heard now and again.

He can feel the weak point where the first segment of Renjun’s index finger meets the rest of it.

“Spit them out,” Renjun says, the rest of his hand squirming inside Mark’s mouth like a smooth-warm spider, trailing over his tongue and sliding against his teeth. He’s gathering up the pills, Mark realizes dumbly. He tries to swallow the one he can feel tucked in the back by his upper molars, but it’s a lot harder to to do with his mouth open than he expected.

They’re caught at an impasse, Mark’s mouth quickly becoming too dry for him to swallow the pill, but his actions making it harder for Renjun to get at it either. Renjun refuses to take his hand out of Mark’s mouth until all the pills are securely in his palm, and Mark refuses to stop trying to get them back.

It’s at this moment that Mark registers the taste of Renjun in his mouth, slightly salty but cleaner than he expected, more _human_ and less world. He can also taste the bitterness of the remaining pill, slowly beginning to dissolve in the corner of his mouth.

Oddly, the taste of it centers him, pulls him down from his blind panic and into reality - Renjun Huang - staring him in the face. 

A change of tactic springs to mind.

His tongue moves to caress Renjun’s searching fingers, twirling around the smooth of his manicured nails and pressing flat against flesh. When he was seventeen, he had a girlfriend - girlfriend is the wrong word for it, probably, since she was eleven years his senior and only ever saw him after ten PM - who was kind of into this sort of thing.

Mark hadn’t liked it, really - he’d found the whole thing straight-up _weird_ , but kept coming back to her for other reasons - and he hopes Renjun doesn’t either. That might just get his fingers out of Mark’s mouth, and this damn pill into his system. 

He hears, sees, _feels_ Renjun release a shaky breath below him. He can smell the remnants of garlic-marinated chicken and the slightest hint of something sweeter, more herbal. “W-what are you doing, Mark?”

He can’t say anything in reply, because Renjun’s fingers are in his mouth, so he just keeps up the good work.

It’s a battle of wills, but Mark has the upper hand, pun not intended.

He can feel the pill dissolving against his gum. It tastes like fucking shit, but Mark is determined. Not just to take the pill and see if it’ll do anything, but to watch the heat rise to Renjun’s hollow cheeks. He hasn’t pulled his hand away, yet, just stares up at Mark with an icy fire - cold to the touch, but a fire nonetheless.

“Those were,” Renjun begins, his face screwing up into a frown. “ _Fuck_ ,” he whispers, in Korean, barely audible even with how close they are. “From the doctor!” He finishes in English.

If Mark could talk right now, he’d probably laugh, say, “Do you mean prescription?”

But he can’t, so Renjun’s probably saving himself as much as he’s imploding right before Mark’s eyes.

He estimates the pill’s about half-gone by now, but it should speed up considerably now that his saliva has broken through the protective outer casing. Renjun’s fingers are pruning up against his tongue.

Mark reaches up, pushes at Renjun’s wrist for a second time. This time, he relents, his warm fingers brushing past Mark’s lips. 

Mark swallows the pill. The rest of them are cradled in Renjun’s palm, saliva-sticky and spit-shining.

“Why did you do that,” Renjun exhales, gaze trained on the pills in his hand.

Mark looks down at the boy in front of him. The strands of black hair, shaking. The blood, rising beneath foundation-coated cheeks. The hint of a tooth, pressing against a wrinkle in his lips.

“I have a problem,” Mark replies, his voice catching slightly before he passes his tongue over the walls of his mouth, oiling the joints. “And I wanted to fuck with you.”

It’s an answer as much as it isn’t, but Mark’s not about to delve into the times and troubles of his life right here, right now - almost everything important on his Wikipedia page, anyway. It’s Renjun’s problem he hasn’t done his research, not Mark’s.

Renjun’s eyes jump up as soon as the word ‘ _fuck_ ’ leaves Mark’s mouth, the fold of his eyelids disappearing as he looks into Mark’s own. “Why?” He repeats, just as airy, but darker, angrier. Mark watches the muscles of his brow furrow in what feels like slow motion.

The pills in his hand clatter to the floor with the quietest _tak-tak-tak-tak_ Mark’s ever heard, his blood rushing in his ears. He's still gripping Renjun’s wrist, so when Renjun lurches forward to try and wipe his damp hand against the worn cotton of Mark’s tie-dye shirt, they move together - at least until Mark realizes what’s going on and stops Renjun in his tracks, his palm less than an inch away from Mark’s chest.

“Don’t be gr-,” Mark starts once Renjun stops pushing, his fingers loosening around the fragile, thin bones in Renjun’s arm. As soon as he lets go, though, Renjun leans forward with a surge of energy, interrupting him with his hand splayed across Mark’s chest, his lips against Mark’s lips.

Mark’s world freezes, peanut butter slow motion.

Renjun’s lips are soft, narrow-plump, and taste like lipstick.

He’s not gay, but Renjun’s a damn good kisser.

They pull apart and his eyes zone in on the flush high on Renjun’s cheeks, the barely-there peach fuzz standing on end. His watery-dark eyes. The disgusting thread of saliva that lingers for a moment between his lips before giving in and snapping out of existence.

Mark leans in, and kisses Renjun again.


	11. Chapter 11

**_“EVENT HORIZON 2110”  
_ ** Screenplay by Billy Moon

****

**INT. EVENT HORIZON - BRIDGE**

Hale programs the sensor workstation. She glances over at Dr. Do: sitting at a computer terminal, his face rapt as data flashes by. His lips move, muttering to himself.

**HALE**

Why Dr. Do, I think you're in love.

**DR. DO**

Hmmm. Baekhyun used to tell me I loved the Event Horizon more than I loved him. I told him that wasn't true, I just knew the Event Horizon better, that's all.

**HALE**

Baekhyun is your husband?

**DR. DO**

Ye- well, not quite.

**HALE**

It must be hard, being so far away from him.

**DR. DO**

Yes. I miss him. He died. Five years now.

**HALE**

I'm sorry.

Dr. Do keeps his attention focused on the screen.


	12. Chapter 12

It keeps happening.

Mark almost wants to call them accidents, except there really isn’t much _accident_ in hooking up with your co-star again and again. Especially when you’re both sober.

(It turns out Renjun’s pills are a variety of low-stakes anxiety medications — he hasn’t been on Xanax in years.)

They’re at Mark’s house at the moment, lured over by the promise of post-filming drinks and snacks. Renjun’s a little bit of a fiend with the wine, already more than halfway through what he’d poured into one of Mark’s recycled Big Gulp cups. His eyes are a little unfocused as he sways to the Drake song Mark’s put on, arms wrapped around himself.

Mark hasn’t drank as much, because he knows that if he does he’ll forget to brush his teeth in the morning and Johnny will smell it on his breath like some kind of police dog. Also, it’s kind of fun, to be the one from the outside looking in for once.

Renjun sidles up closer to him, socked feet silent against the hardwood of Mark’s living room floor. 

“ _F_ _inish_ ,” he commands in Korean, knocking his plastic cup into Mark’s glass. His English has improved considerably since they first met — not that it was bad in the first place — but whenever he gets a little too drunk he tends to go back to Korean around Mark.

Mark obliges, throwing the remainders of red in his glass back like a shot. “Satisfied?” He asks, and Renjun nods as he chugs down the rest of his own drink, spilling a little with the motion of his head. Mark's eyes trail a drop of wine from the corner of Renjun’s mouth, down and down and _down_ the narrow column of his throat, over the rise of a collarbone, until it blooms, barely pink, against the loose collar of Renjun’s white t-shirt. Without thinking, Mark reaches up to press his thumb over the damp spot and under the collar, holding the fresh stain from both sides. “Why are you here,” Mark mutters under his breath, against Renjun’s bare skin, heartbeat soft from the back of his index finger.

Mark still feels — a sick jealous _hate_ in the bottom of his stomach for Renjun and his porcelain-toothpick wrists, his tiny dancer’s legs. The carefully-trained light and dark of Renjun’s voice, audible as he speaks. A future that was his and yet never could have been his. Everything Renjun represents — 

Mark still daydreams about soft breasts and long hair and the tell-tale smell of Victoria’s Secret shimmer lotion, but somehow they’ve been joined by Renjun's square, open laugh Mark has learned to crave, the too-much feeling of Renjun’s nose pressed into his cheek. They’ve also been joined by guilt, insidious guilt, because — 

Because — who Renjun is and what Renjun represents are two painfully different things.

That, and because Mark is certain that if he ever sees Renjun’s dick he’s going to throw up.

(To have the vague half-boy of his midnight fantasies turn from a kissy-kissy Ken doll to a real human being who will bleed and breathe and cum and cry — Mark can’t handle it. At least not sober. And if he turns to anything stronger than the wine dripping down Renjun's throat, Johnny will call the police _and_ join the police in killing him. Then what’s the god damn point?)

Renjun’s smile turns impish at Mark’s touch, and he pulls off his t-shirt in one smooth motion. He stumbles forward, too, haphazardly landing on Mark’s lap.

They haven’t been like this for long. After that first time they kissed in Renjun’s trailer, they avoided each other for days. None of their takes from that week had been usable, Mark unable to touch Renjun’s skin and Renjun’s shoulders rising protectively to his ears at any sight of Mark at all. He’d been one impulse away from filing a complaint against Renjun — anything to never have to see him again. 

It wasn’t until Ten had thrown a kickback in his penthouse apartment, wine and vodka sodas free-flowing, that they even managed to make eye contact for more than half a second.

Renjun’s nipples are beginning to pebble in the living-room air.

The warmth of his body burns into Mark’s thighs, his human imprint.

Renjun had gotten drunk at Ten’s party, too, but Mark had been drunker. He doesn’t remember much more than punching Ten’s wall, a breath away from Renjun’s left ear, and waking up in Ten’s guest room with Renjun in his underwear, the marks of Renjun’s manicured fingernails streaking down his back. They’d almost fought again that morning.

He smells the alcohol as Renjun exhales into his mouth. His arms wrap around Renjun’s waist, fingers interlocking with overprotruding vertebrae. Mark swears he can feel Renjun’s diaphragm expand. Collapse.

It’s taken time for them to reach this point. Mostly, Mark is horny, and Renjun is surprisingly willing.

Surprising, in general.

Their lips make contact.

Bile rises in the back of Mark’s throat. His heart beats faster. Renjun pushes him back against the couch-cushions.

“ _Sicheng told me you don’t like me_ ,” Renjun breathes, and the hairs on Mark’s upper lip rise at the chill.

The sentences freezes him, hemoglobin turned inner-city traffic jam. Sicheng is the producer sent by the Chinese company, and one of Renjun's closest confidants in the crew. Mark watches Renjun’s eyes as they flick up from staring at his lips to match his gaze.

“It’s complicated,” Mark replies, for lack of anything else to say. 

He's being honest, at least.

Renjun hums, songbird voice. He leans down close again; all Mark can see is Renjun, Renjun, Renjun and the shadows he creates. 

“ _Good enough_.”


	13. Chapter 13

**r/Moviesinthemaking •** Posted by u/chittaphilia 1 day ago

54 Upvotes

**[DISCUSSION] Casting in Leechaiyapornkul’s Event Horizon remake**

Hello! Seeing as the official cast for Event Horizon 2110 was released just a few days ago, I wanted to share some thoughts I had… I’m really excited for Michael B Jordan as Captain Miller, and I think Mark Lee will do pretty well as the re-named Dr. Weir, actually, especially with his recent performance in Spiderman. The rest of the cast looks pretty solid, too, a lot of diverse up-and-comers, which I guess was Leechaiyapornkul’s goal. There was just one thing I found odd… Huang Renjun, a k-pop idol, is listed as playing ‘Baekhyun’. Does anyone know what he’s doing, or what the ‘Baekhyun’ character is? Also, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the rest of the casting for the film!

123 Comments

**buffsmove** 37 points · 17 hours ago

Unsubtle attempt to get some hate on k-pop going, but I can respect it

**dddhela** 31 points · 1 day ago

I’m pretty sure Renjun is playing some version of Mark’s love interest

**chittaphilia** 14 points · 1 day ago

Wait so we’re getting gay korean Weir and Claire???

**iimpressw33** 11 points · 21 hours ago 

Oof I don’t know how Huang is gonna hold up to the rest of the cast… best of luck to him tho lol

**323lightswitch** 4 points · 19 hours ago

I think Renjun will do just fine, he’s acted before!! 


	14. Chapter 14

**[ TO: Mark’s iPhone | FROM: hyuck (stunt ♊) ]**

_Tuesday 8:12AM_ yo mark wya  
 _Tuesday 8:12AM_ oh fuck you’re probably with renjun again arent u  
 _Tuesday 8:13AM_ IM COMING IN please have ur clothes on or else  
 _Tuesday 8:14AM_ u kno what im venmo requesting 5 dollars for this anyway  
Read 8:14AM


	15. Chapter 15

**LOCK SCREEN:** The default iOS 11 background, its cheery yellow split diagonally in two by a six-color rainbow.

**HOME SCREEN:** A picture of a boy, his focus on the dish he’s preparing. Bright morning light streams in through a faraway window, settling in a comfortable halo around the edges of his profile. He’s slight, small — or maybe that’s just the extravagant size of everything around him. The metal bowl of soup, divided in two like a yin-yang symbol, is easily the same size as his torso, and the piles of noodles and meats and vegetables are stacked so high they seem to reach the brim of his baseball cap. Maybe it’s the way the sleeves of his hoodie — is that  _ his  _ hoodie? That BC Lions hoodie? — slide down to cover his palms despite the risk of catching the broth, leaving only slim fingers visible. Artist’s fingers, some might call them.

Or, maybe it’s the way the photo is taken, the imperfect lighting, the hint of shaky hands behind the camera. Taken like it was never meant for anyone else’s eyes.

Maybe it  _ is _ just that — 

His Mona-Lisa smile.


	16. Chapter 16

**THE BOY WHO LIGHTS UP THE WORLD !** _@injyeolmi_ · 32min  
heollll u guys will never believe what i saw when i was in la with my cousins today

**THE BOY WHO LIGHTS UP THE WORLD !** _@injyeolmi_ · 32min  
@injyeolmi i saw renjun… omg… hes there rn to film event horizon but i dont think he was filming then… he was with the other korean boy they cast in the movie !!

**THE BOY WHO LIGHTS UP THE WORLD !** _@injyeolmi_ · 31min  
@injyeolmi what’s his name? mark lee? idk i dont rly keep up with non-kpop content srry… but they were tgt last night!! hanging out!!

**THE BOY WHO LIGHTS UP THE WORLD !** _@injyeolmi_ · 31min  
@injyeolmi but get this… i was kinda far away bc they were in a super fancy restaurant but through the windows it looked???? like they were holding hands or something??? im not from la but my cousin is and she said that thats a popular date spot for american celebs

**THE BOY WHO LIGHTS UP THE WORLD !** _@injyeolmi_ · 31min  
@injyeolmi i mean the whole place was full of candle light and stuff. idk injeolmis what do u think is markren a thing??? we already know renvy died after dnyl but maybe renjun really does have a thing for english speakers hehe

**want eat jaemin** _@nct000zz_ · 30min  
@injyeolmi LMFAOOO YAZ ICB… JAEMINS ABOUT TO PULL UP LIKE THIS WHEN RENJUN GETS BACK TO KR  
Attached image: welcomehomecheatermeme.jpg

**stream GRADUATION** _@forrj323_ · 19min  
@injyeolmi can u take this thread down plz, this will damage renjunnie’s reputation. ppl are actually going to think he is a gay

**winnie <3 gmt-5 for now! ** _@peaceloveandnctdream_ · 13min  
@injyeolmi woahh that’s crazy! im glad rj is making friends on set 💘😊 !! kinda surprised hes close to m*rk l*ee of all ppl tho... 🤨


	17. Chapter 17

**[ TO: Mark’s iPhone | FROM: Renjun Huang ]**

_ Saturday 6:07AM  _ Fuck  
_ Saturday 6:07AM  _ Mark I’m so sorry I didn’t make it to dinner  
_ Saturday 6:08AM  _ Sicheng, Hendery, and Ten had a chinese thing they needed me to go to last minute  
_ Saturday 6:08AM  _ You can reserve another table? I’ll make it this time  
_ Saturday 6:08AM  _ Sorry.  
Read 9:15A.M.

**[ TO: Renjun Huang | FROM: Mark’s iPhone ]**

_ Saturday 9:28AM _ hahhahahahhahah it’s fine it’s nbd  
_ Saturday 9:28AM _ yeah ill reserve another table. is next friday good?  
_ Saturday 9:28AM _ also u never use capital letters is everything ok?  
Delivered 9:28A.M.


	18. Chapter 18

**‘Event Horizon 2110’ Review: Leaving Behind Everything But The Horror**

_Leechaiyapornkul’s update of the space-horror cult classic packs all the blood and guts of the original in a shiny new skin._

By Jisung Park

Published July 2nd, 2021

When _Event Horizon_ was released in August of 1997, it made back less than half of its 60 million dollar budget at the box office. It was described by critics as, “A retarded Goth version of 2001”, and, “Not quite "The Shining In Space" of its aspirations”, only to amass a cult following years later. Luckily, it seems unlikely that its successor, _Event Horizon 2110_ will suffer the same fate. Not only does the film already have quite a following, both from fans of the original and Leechaiyapornkul junkies coming off the high of his last release, _New Heroes_ , this remake tells the same story as the original but with much more heart -- and not just in terms of the gore. _Event Horizon 2110_ is disgusting and terrifying enough to satisfy fans of the original, but sensitive and thoughtful enough to bring in more than horror’s usual audiences.

The film is lead by the ever-charismatic Captain Miller (Michael B. Jordan) as he attempts to lead his crew away from the horrors lying in wait. The ship Lewis and Clark is...

[REDACTED FOR SPOILERS. WILL BE UPDATED AT FILM’S PREMIER]

Opposite Jordan’s classically heroic Miller is the film’s best kept secret -- Mark Lee’s Dr. Kyungsoo Do, a gay, Korean-American reimagining of Dr. William Weir. While Lee’s casting and the supposed “rice-washing” of Weir’s character has gained some criticism, the rewrite works beautifully in the film, much like Leechaiyapornkul’s masterful but undeniable self-insertion in _Dream in a Dream_. ( **READ NEXT** :  Ten Leechaiyapornkul on representation, “I just never saw anyone like me on TV.” ) In fact, unlike the starkly cold interactions between Weir and Claire in the original, Lee and waifishly handsome Korean import Renjun Huang’s Do and Baekhyun build a subtle arc of tenderness, pain, and, eventually, unrestrained fury that mirrors the ever-growing cornucopia of blood and terror in the plot. In fact, Lee and Huang’s on-screen chemistry is, oddly, one of the most memorable parts of the film. Or perhaps it is the contrast between Dr. Do’s nostalgic memories of Baekhyun and the nausea-inducing deaths of…

[REDACTED FOR SPOILERS. WILL BE UPDATED AT FILM’S PREMIER]


	19. Chapter 19

**TMZ**

**MARK LEE STOOD UP AT ONE OF LA’S SWANKIEST EATS?**

_ 07/03/21 1:22 AM PST _

It seems like  _ Event Horizon 2110 _ paychecks must have come in, because last night Hollywood’s favorite Canadian comeback kid was spotted at This-N-That, celebrity chef Chenle Zhong’s Asian fusion gem and one of the country’s most expensive restaurants. (It’s also one of the trendiest date-night eats for Hollywood celebs, and is rumored to have a wait time of over a month.) But it looks like a certain someone’s date isn’t coming back, because eyewitness report that Mark Lee sat alone at one of This-N-That’s extravagant tables for over an hour and a half without ordering… anything. Mark was described as fidgety and constantly checking his phone, but a few secret photos from last night show the star looking red-carpet ready. So Mark probably isn’t on another bender -- we all remember how he dressed back then. So who’s got you in their web, Spiderman, and why have they left you all alone?  _ READ MORE AT TMZ… _


	20. Chapter 20

**[ TO: Renjun Huang | FROM: Mark’s iPhone ]**

_ Friday 8:41PM _ hey renjun are you coming?  


_ Friday 8:50PM _ renjun????  


_ Friday 8:58PM _ renjun???????????  


_ Friday 9:11PM _ i’m leaving the restaurant.  
Delivered 3:02A.M.


	21. Chapter 21

**Calabasas Manifest, Minute 27:04 of 1:34:11**

**_Play?_ **

A man. Not young, but not old either. He sits in an extravagant red armchair, a beatific, toothy grin curled across his face. He has a youthful energy about him, but it’s frenetic, as _knowing_ as it is bubbly. Instantly, he is disconcerting.

A digital placard pops up on screen for ten seconds, colored red to match the chair. It’s a fitting color, for him.

 _Yangyang Liu_ , the placard reads. _Ex-Stunt Double, 42 years old. Dusseldorf, Germany_.

It fades away, and the man begins to speak. It’s a response to a question - it always is, in documentaries like this - but the question has been cut out, left up to the audience’s imagination.

“Oh,” Yangyang starts, entire body moving with his words, “It was always about love, with him, I think. Attention. The human gaze - whatever you want to call it. He could never get enough of it. Probably something in his childhood, I dunno, but - that was why - that was why it all happened, of course. And it could only happen as it did because it _was_ him, after all.”

Yangyang pauses, regards the camera like an old friend.

“He always looked so innocent, you know, even during the worst of it. Even with blood in his teeth, he could smile at you and you would want to protect him. It’s just something he must have been born with. If it had been anyone else I don’t think anything would have happened at all.”

Another pause, another muted question. Yangyang’s eyebrow raises.

“No,” his answer comes immediately. “No, I don’t regret it at all. Not a minute of it. Isn’t that terrible?”

He laughs, leaning back into the cushions of his obnoxious armchair, and he laughs and laughs and laughs.

**_Pause?_ **


	22. Chapter 22

**_Property of Huang Renjun, do not open.  
_ ** July 3rd, 2021

Today Sicheng asked me to grab dinner with him again. We almost have a routine now - I guess it’s kind of an odd thing, but Sicheng is the reason I got this role, in the end, and it’s brought me a lot of blessings. I’m very thankful for Sicheng. 

He paid for the meal, too, but he’s like… richer than any of us know, I think. After dinner he took me back to his house on Norman’s Way, and we hung out with the rest of his boys. Yangyang gave me the wine. It tasted terrible, but Sicheng said it was expensive, so I drank all of it. I’m very thankful for Sicheng. 

I don’t remember much else. But nothing bad happened to me. Nothing bad ever happens to me around Sicheng. I’m very thankful for Sicheng. He put me in his bed and let me sleep. Dejun was sleeping there too. It was a big bed. I’m very thankful for Sicheng. Dejun was hurt. We helped him. We helped Dejun. We helped him because he was hurt. His soul was hurting, Sicheng told us, and we had to get the hurt out of him. We are all very thankful for Sicheng. Very thankful for Yangyang, Yangyang gave us the wine. Dejun was hurt and we helped him because we are friends. Kunhang helped me change the bedsheets after. 

I drank more of the wine. Sicheng put me to sleep after that. It was a good sleep, even though I’m tired now. My body aches. But it’s in a good way. Of course it’s in a good way. Sicheng helped me. I’m very thankful for Sicheng.


	23. Chapter 23

Renjun 的 iPhone

**Mark Lee (1)...** 星期六  
❌手机

**Mark Lee (2)...** 星期五  
❌手机

**冠亨 (Hendery)...** 星期四  
✅手机

**사랑둥이나나…** 星期一  
❌手机


	24. Chapter 24

**‘Event Horizon 2110’ Cast Rates Everyday Scary Things | Teen Vogue  
** Uploaded by  **Teen Vogue ✔  
** _ 1.59M Subscribers, 164K Views _

_ 3:23 _

Two men stand in front of a white wall, a black box with a hole cut in the top between them. One of the men - he's taller, but not by much - has black hair and tanner skin, a catlike face and heavy bags under his eyes. The other has hair dyed a shining silver; he is slimmer in almost every way, and while he looks just as exhausted, there is a smile on his face, a light in his eyes. He pushes up the sleeve of his elegant camel coat to reach into the box. 

“Ah,” he starts, reading off the slip of paper he’s drawn out of the box in accented English, “What’s scarier, Mark, running into the ex you’re still not over or accidentally saying someone else’s name during sex?” He laughs a little at the end, coy and just loud enough for the camera to pick up as he throws a knowing look into its glassy gaze, “These questions are rather strong, aren’t they?” 

Mark’s eyes, on the other hand, never meet the camera. They are focused entirely on the other man, wandering from his glossy hair to the Hollywood-white of his teeth to the curl of his slim fingers, still holding the slip of paper in air. “Uh,” Mark replies eloquently. Something about the way he says it suggests this isn’t the first — or last — time this has happened. 

“Uh, I guess saying someone else’s name during sex,” he decides, after a long, awkward silence. “Running into your ex isn’t…” he pauses, gaze closing off like he’s looking within, words sounding less and less like they’re for the camera’s ears, “scary, it’s just painful.”

The other man flashes a tight smile, as hyper-aware of the fact that they're being filmed as Mark is not. Standing next to Mark, who’s still staring at him, unmoving, he looks unreal — silver-haired and spritely, the only toy in the box wound up right. 

“I guess so, yeah,” he says to Mark, eyes twinkling with some emotion — annoyance? Fondness? It’s hard to tell.

The clip cuts to another duo: a broad-chested man and a girl with curly hair and sleepy eyes. 

“Dropping your phone in the toilet or forgetting to charge it at night?” She drawls.


	25. Chapter 25

“Aaaand, cut!”

The entire set seems to exhale. The intense filming lights shut off, and beside him Renjun stands almost instantly. Mark’s head pounds. He should not have taken that last bite of Jeno’s brownie.

Renjun is on his feet and moving, moving, _moving_.

Mark hasn’t seen him in person since their last press event for _Event Horizon 2110_ , which was a week ago. Mark hasn’t texted him since a week and a half ago. That was the time at the restaurant.

Mark pulls himself to his feet, feeling like the world is moving in slow motion. Or, perhaps, like he alone is moving in slow motion. The world is fine, it’s him that’s fucked up. That's valid.

Somehow, he manages to duck across camera cables and scurrying staff to follow Renjun out of the studio, into the alley and the dark of the early morning, where Renjun is waiting for the automatic door of a large van to open.

“Renjun! Wait!” Mark calls, reaching out for Renjun’s wrist. 

His hand wraps all the way around, like it has so many times before. 

Renjun turns like a firecracker, like a mousetrap, like a string being plucked. 

“ _What is it, Mark_?” He snarls in Korean, and leans forward for a sickening moment — a sickening moment where Mark allows himself to think that perhaps, that maybe, he was leaning in to kiss him — but Renjun pulls back just as quickly, pretty face screwed up in disgust. 

“You reek,” he says, this time in English. That’s new vocab. Mark is proud of him. 

Renjun is too sober and Mark is too gone, but funnily enough Renjun is the one that’s leaving.

“What did I do wrong, Renjun? Can you tell me? Please?” He tightens his grip on Renjun’s wrist, oblivious to how his face contorts even more at the pressure — pain.

“I miss you,” Mark breathes into the air. The truest words he’s ever said. Is this what it feels like, to stop acting? How has the world been hiding this from Mark for so long? This first taste of the truth.

Renjun’s face softens for a moment, like a time lapse video, a flower rotting into dirt. What you really are. The truth, the truth. Mark is obsessed.

“I,” Renjun starts, his eyes beginning to fill with tears that come too easy, as if they have been sitting under the surface, just waiting for an _Open, sesame._ A key in Mark's hand, the snap of a broken trance. He'll accept it, he'll accept it.

In a moment of characteristic Renjun-strength, he pulls his wrist out of Mark’s grasp and throws both hands around Mark’s neck, so fast that the first instinct of Mark’s reptile brain is to dodge. Renjun — ever-persistent, ever-intentional Renjun — still hits his target, an impulsive kiss, wet with tears and Renjun’s lipgloss from filming, planted on the side of Mark’s neck. 

A _shht-click._ Car window rolled down. An unhappy face hidden by bug-like sunglasses. “Renjun!” A man’s voice Mark can't place. Renjun’s lips on his throat. Two inches off the bob of his Adam’s apple. The silent _splash_ of a hot tear against his collarbone.

A yell of words Mark cannot understand. A pair of arms, whose owner Mark cannot see, wrapped around Renjun’s chest. Renjun’s hands reaching to him, strong but not strong enough.

His coat pulls open with the movement, and for a moment Mark sees something, purple-green-yellow and sprawling, opening from the junction of neck to shoulder and spreading down, the burst of a paintbrush dipped in clean water. An entire sunset over the horizon of Renjun's shirt-collar. He cannot comprehend it, but it will be the only thing he can think of, later, when this is all over. The bruise, the size of it. The color.

More angry voices, and the final sight of Renjun’s face, ugly-crying, whisper-yelling “ _Fuck off!”_ in Korean, looking Mark straight in his bloodshot eyes.

The van door slides closed. Engine growls to life. Mark stumbles back, hits the brick wall. 

He can only think _truth, beautiful truth._

The van drives away. Renjun’s face — the imprint of his kiss, the wetness against the collar of Mark’s t-shirt. 

His head hurts.

Mark doesn’t know how long he sits there, in the alley behind the Teen Vogue studio, but when he raises his head again the California sun is burning high in the sky. A bruise, a bruise.

Renjun has a bruise.


	26. Chapter 26

A marble goblet, shaped like a trophy. An engraving of Dionysus, man spread back, perfectly round grapes millimeters away from his open mouth, so gently cradled in the hands of a satyr. You are the satyr. The goblet is in your hands. It came from a Tiffany’s auction, many years ago. You do not know how it wound up here. How did  _ you _ wind up here? 

You pour the wine into the boy’s mouth, except it is not wine and he is not a boy. He is naked, completely. So are you. God is wrapped in furs, gold-trimmed and beautiful. He seems to be glowing. It makes sense. He is God, after all. The not-wine is dark, far darker than wine should be -- that is how you know it is not wine, by its inky opacity, the way it slides over the lip of the goblet more like syrup than grape juice -- but it reaches is target all the same, sliding slick over the not-boy’s bruises.

“Feel better,” God breathes. You feel better. 

The not-boy inhales, exhales; the rise and fall of his chest made more visible by the slippery shine of the not-wine, like molten plastic encasing the hills and valleys of his ribcage.

“Do you feel better?” God asks. He’s not asking you.

“Y-yes,” the not-boy exhales, the tar-like not-wine falling into his open mouth. It makes it difficult for him to speak, you can tell, but he tries anyway. “Thangk, thang-oo.”

God’s hand -- rectangular, perfectly proportioned -- grips the not-boy’s face by the chin, thumb pressing into one cheek and fingers into the other. “Don’t swallow,” God commands, squeezing tighter, strength of a god, god,  _ god _ . 

“Don’t be an idiot and swallow again, Dejun. You don’t want to owe me your life twice over, sweetie.” God’s language slips a little bit at the end of his sentence, into something provincial. Idyllic. Fond. You know that Dejun is his second-favorite. Everyone knows that. 

Especially Dejun.

“Just  _ chew _ ,” God commands, releasing his grip on Dejun’s face and laying back against his furs once again. You are still pouring. Together, you and your god watch Dejun try his best not to choke.


	27. Chapter 27

**[ TO: John Seo (Mark manager) | FROM: Hyuck’s iPhone ]**

_ Thursday 3:10PM _ is mark okay  
_ Thursday 3:10PM _ don’t tell him i asked but i need to know  
_ Thursday 3:11PM _ just check up on him if you haven’t he keeps sending me john legend songs and it’s fucking weird  
_ Thursday 3:11PM _ and he blocked jeno on instagram so something’s up idk

Delivered 3:11P.M.


	28. Chapter 28

The carpet is awfully red.

Renjun’s not quite sure why he’s fixated on that, but he is. The thought keeps circling in his mind, like a clump of hair in the shower too large to slide down the drain.

It really is _so_ red. Have all the red carpets in the past been this red, or is this one _extra_ red?

Renjun isn’t sure. It’s an unnatural red, certainly, the same sharp-vivid scarlet as lipstick, chemical chili powder, or the outside of a solo cup. There is no red like this anywhere else in the world but here, at the center of human civilization, human ingenuity -- even fresh blood is not this shade of red. It’s almost mellower, somehow. Aware of its own limitations, not so determined to pierce Renjun through the eye.

A finger digs into his side, the soft flesh just below his ribcage. Renjun almost trips, but no matter how red the carpet or how bright the camera flash, he has done this for years.

“ _Smile, Renjun_ ,” Sicheng hisses out of the corner of his mouth, in Chinese and so clearly only for Renjun’s ears. It is, of course, his hand that is around Renjun’s waist, his fingers pressing against the bandaged cut hidden under Renjun’s tailored white suit. His cut that he put there on Renjun’s body, the tail end of a kiss. He probably won’t bleed -- Sicheng is not pressing that hard, really, just enough to make Renjun _focus_ , but even if he does, he doubts that, compared to the carpet, it will hardly be red enough for anyone to notice.

God, this carpet. Renjun can’t take his eyes off of it.

It’s _so_ red. It’s like -- it’s like he doesn’t have the space in his mind to think of anything else but the color, his feet, Sicheng’s hand on his side --

“ _Walk with me, Renjun. Don’t trip_.” 

He does as Sicheng says, of course. They’re here at this event to represent China, China with its red flag and golden stars, China with its actor-idols and multimillionaire production company chairs. Well, Sicheng isn’t technically that high up, but he is, apparently, the most charming of all the executives, the youngest and handsomest and many other - _est_ s, so it is his job to speak. As usual, Renjun is just here to smile, stand in the pictures, look pretty. Make Sicheng look like he is even more - _est_ s than he really is.

That’s Renjun’s job.

But he can’t stop staring at the carpet.

Oh, so red.

(There is a voice in the back of his head -- a voice smushed up against the calcium wall of his skull, a voice that can barely speak but speaks anyway, a voice, a voice, a voice -- and it says, “You are just looking at the carpet so you don’t have to look at anything else. It’s a regular carpet. You are just looking at the carpet so that you do not have to look at Sicheng, because if you look at Sicheng you will fall to your knees and take off your clothes and the whole world will see what he has done to you. To your body. To me. To us. He’s the reason you’re like this. Well, not entirely, but you want to give him that blame? No, that power. It’s all his fault that you’re so weak. So you can’t look at him. 

You are just looking at the carpet so you don’t have to look at Mark. 

Because -- because if you look at Mark you will start running. You will run away from Sicheng and from the cameras and they’ll get pictures of you, of your body coming apart where Sicheng has written his name, because you chose Sicheng over Mark, and Mark will see that you made that choice. He knows you did, but you’re pretending he doesn’t because the carpet is so red who can think of anything else, right? You never would have chosen Mark, and it’s Sicheng’s fault. 

_Run. Run._

_RUN!)_

Sicheng presses harder, and the voice evaporates as if it had never been there at all. They walk at the same pace, over the red, red, red carpet.

The press gets pictures of Renjun’s eyeshadow, his downturned eyelids. Groundbreaking, they call it. Asian masculinity, isn’t it something new? Something fresh? Men in makeup, men with their arms around each other -- it’s different, across the ocean, it’s different.

No, it’s exactly the same. 

( _RUN!_ )

It’s just a red carpet. It’s the same as before. No matter how red or how bright, he has done this for years.


	29. Chapter 29

Oh, there it is. 

Flesh.

Mine. 

Swing-swing —

_ Hit! _

Ah, I made it.

Do it back do it back do it do it do it do it to me

FUCK!

Fuck, fuck, yes, do it again do it do it do it

Yes god, yes!

It hurts it hurts it hurtsYES!!!

My knees— your—

Ahhhhh,

( _ Eyes? No. I, I, I see.) _

I made it?

I made it. For you. For you for you foryou f’ryu

Do you like it please tell me please

FUCK!

Do you want my hands too I’ll give them to you, oh!

Too tight please please my

I’m sorry my thigh I’m sorry I’ll be q

Oh, oh, oh god, oh god OH-!


	30. Chapter 30

“You forget that I literally have the passcode to your house, Mark,” Jeno Lee’s voice comes from around the corner, so unassuming and soft-edged that the sound of it scares Mark more than it might have otherwise.

Of course, Jeno is right.

He appears in Mark’s line of sight — directly in front of Mark’s massive leather sofa, that is — with Horangi’s leash and harness in hand.

“What’s up?” Jeno asks, sitting dangerously close to where Mark’s head lies on the coordinated footrest. He smells of kitty litter and weed under Old Spice, but it works, for some reason. Things tend to do that, for Jeno. There’s no one else Mark knows who could transition from fellow child star to hustler extraordinaire quite like Jeno has — Calabasas’ most reliable plug, professional cat-walker, and Goop spokesman all at once. 

“You shouldn’t have sold to me,” Mark mumbles, words trapped by the way his cheek is stuck to the couch cushion. “Morally fuckin’ dubious, dude.”

Out of the very top of his peripheral vision, Mark can see Jeno frown. “You seemed like you needed the pick-me-up,” he says, quite simply.

“ _Yeah,_ ” Mark picks his head up with a gross peeling noise, “but I had work the next day and you _know_ edibles hit different for me.”

Jeno’s frown doesn’t change, but he shrugs a little, dropping Horangi’s walking gear on the floor. “I was just trying to be a friend to you, dude, since you won’t fucking tell me anything.” 

It’s at this that Mark pulls himself upright entirely. “If I had something to tell you, I would.” He can feel the tension in his jaw, the way his eyes have narrowed.

Jeno looks disbelieving, but that might just be his face screwed up because of allergies.

“For sure, bro,” Jeno replies.

Mark explodes.

“I don’t see why I should tell you shit about my love life when _you_ keep fucking kissing Hyuck and saying ‘no homo’ after like you didn’t fucking do an ad campaign for Grindr last year.”

Jeno’s eyes open wide and his eyebrows raise, but that’s the only sign that he’s shocked at all.

“Donghyuck isn’t looking for a serious relationship right now,” he says, calmly, but they both know his words are for his own benefit as much as Mark’s.

“ _Donghyuck’s not looking for a serious relationship right now,_ ” Mark taunts, “yeah, and I’m not getting ghosted by a fucking K-pop idol-”

Mark doesn’t realize the words have left his mouth until they’re out there. His relationship with Renjun — it wasn’t a secret, but they never talked about it with anyone. He didn’t even see most of his friends over the course of filming because he was too busy —

“K-pop idol?” Jeno echoes, finally emoting half as much as Mark is.

Mark freezes. He doesn’t say anything. Jeno’s smart, he really is, but —

“Lemme guess, Jennie Kim? Chungha? Red Velvet’s Yeri?” 

— but he’s smart in a way that lets him convince the authorities that it’s possible to pay rent in the City of Angels off of expensive bengal hybrids and smiling next to “youth-infused” jade rollers alone. He doesn’t tend to notice the obvious. 

Mark begins to laugh nervously, a tittering stream of ‘ahahahaha’s that roll out of his mouth like skis down a slope.

Jeno’s eyes narrow. He’s known Mark for years — since their fucking Barney days, for goodness sake — so he knows he’s off the mark.

He stares at Mark, saying nothing, only squinting behind his wire-framed glasses, for five long seconds. 

“Oh no,” he says at last, “No, Mark. It wasn’t Renjun, was it?”

He says it like he knows some secret, like he’s just heard some awful story. 

Then again, Mark thinks, his giggles reaching a horrible and unstoppable crescendo, Jeno’s sounded a lot like that ever since he started dealing.

“It was,” Mark admits, falling back against the couch cushions.

“Is that…” Jeno ventures, gaze dropping for a moment. He has to look over his shoulder to meet Mark’s eyes in Mark’s new position. “Is that why you blocked me everywhere?"

Clearly, he doesn’t understand the correlation. Mark would be surprised if he did.

“You sold to me, Jeno,” he says lowly, “And you really, _really_ shouldn’t have. It’s not — it’s not your fault, I know, but-”

Jeno smiles his million-dollar smile, eyes crinkling into perfect crescent moons. Jeno’s smile. It _is_ comforting, Mark thinks — every time Jeno smiles at him it’s like it’s the first, and he realizes all over again exactly how Jeno does what he does. Reassurance in the flesh. It’s a talent, really. 

Jeno smiles, and says, “I get it, Mark, I do.”


	31. Chapter 31

**TMZ**

**MARK LEE’S MENTAL BREAKDOWN?**

_10/13/21 9:06 AM PST_

In case you’ve forgotten about Mark Lee’s crazy past, it’s all only a Google search away — or you could just look at the way he acted leaving his Calabasas mansion this morning. Lee appeared with bright green hair in stained gray joggers and a white t-shirt, looking more like the boy we used to know than the polished Hollywood star he’s seemed to have become. Could it be that Lee is slipping back into his old habits? It seems likely, as eyewitnesses on the scene claimed that Lee looked exhausted, and when the paparazzi tried to take his photograph for... _READ MORE AT TMZ…_


	32. Chapter 32

**_POLAROID 1, TAKEN 10:00PM_ **

Renjun, head on, from the bust up. A normal headshot, his hair dyed back to black and t-shirt very nearly blending into the white wall. But his eyes are red and half-lidded, staring straight at the camera but seeing nothing. Just barely visible, concealed by the quality of the photo, are his pupils, dilated so wide his eyes look entirely black. Perhaps if you didn’t know any better you wouldn’t know any different, but you _do_ know better. You know he’s famous for the way his eyes shine, and now they look so entirely lifeless, dulled out like worn leather shoes. It reminds you of the first time you went home after college, after you’d finally felt like you’d made something of yourself. There was a firefly park in a town three and a half hours to the south, where you’d gone with family when you were fourteen. You can still remember the way the grass had looked, lightning bugs as densely packed as any Beijing highway. So many points of light you could never count them all, flickering on and off again, moving independently and somehow together at the same time. Almost ten years later, when you came home, it was to a place completely different from your memories. You went back to that park as an adult, tasked with babysitting a cousin’s sister’s child. As the sun set, you noticed there were almost no fireflies left at all. Just one or two weak flickers against the darkness, trying so hard to exist in the polluted air.

**_POLAROID 2, TAKEN 11:30PM_ **

Renjun is leaning against the same wall. The photo is even from the exact same distance, at the exact same height, but where the first had been — _off_ , to the experienced eye, this one is outright wrong. His lips are stained with some kind of dark, his eyes very nearly closed. His hair is all messed up, congealed by the sweat beading at his forehead and the same dark liquid that’s seeped into his cracked lips. He’s smiling, or trying to, the corners of his lips pulled up and back to reveal bloody gums, but his cheeks are lax and unresponsive. It looks more like a grimace. The worst of all, though, are the sharp scarlet lines against his exposed shoulders, ruler-straight and leaking, like someone left-handed had taken a red pen to his body and drawn with their eyes closed. Even the polaroid’s poor quality and the smattering of dirty fingerprints that take up the bottom half of the photo can’t hide that it’s fresh blood.

**_POLAROID 3, TAKEN 2:04AM_ **

Renjun is asleep or passed out or otherwise unconscious. He’s been dressed in a clean blue shirt, his hair brushed back. There’s a small river of drool coming out of the left side of his mouth; his lips are entirely slack. There’s a bandage, already swollen with blood, peeking out of the collar of his shirt, and the shadow of a person leaning over him, suggesting that his body is laying flat on the marble floor.

The shadow moves. You move. “Sicheng,” you say, letting the polaroid camera drop to the floor with a clatter, its plastic casing landing with a shallow sound. But then, maybe you’re just used to heavier sounds against this particular floor. “Sicheng, I don’t know if I can do this for much longer.”


	33. Chapter 33

**INTERNAL BY-LAWS (LEVEL 3)**

**OF**

**WUYUEVISION MEDIA GROUP, LOS ANGELES BRANCH.**

  1. Members should only participate in projects sponsored or otherwise sanctioned by WuYueVision Media Group, Los Angeles (hereafter abbreviated as WYV Media, LA) or sister organizations under Al****a Group. Participation in other projects requires direct approval by WYV Media, LA Chief Executive Officer, Sicheng Dong.
  2. Any changes to appearance (hair cut or color, weight loss or gain, piercings, etc.) should be approved by management before being made
  3. Attending monthly internal review sessions (hosted by Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul, Chief Creative Officer) is mandatory. Any absences must be pre-approved.
  4. Do not affiliate with celebrities or staff members from rival companies.
  5. Public-facing members should not pursue romantic relationships outside of WYV Media, LA. Internal relationships should be approved by management.
  6. Should WYV Media, LA Chief Executive Officer, Sicheng Dong, be unavailable to provide feedback, members should wait until he is available. In emergencies, members can defer to the opinions of the executive cabinet, Kun Qian (Chief Operations Officer) and Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul (Chief Creative Officer). 
  7. Any infractions of WYV Media, LA’s official rules of conduct _or_ internal by-laws (any level) will result in a corresponding penalty and a required period of personal reflection.
  8. Flesh is temporary.




	34. Chapter 34

**_Property of Huang Renjun, do not open._ **

January 2nd, 2018.

It’s the end of the year, so you know what that means. Sorry I haven’t been able to write in a while, I've just been… exhausted. I think today is the only day off we have in the next week, or so, and it's only because of some limit on the number of hours we can be worked without violating labor laws, or something like that? I didn’t understand it, but Doyoung-hyung was talking about it in the car on the way back from the New Year’s special broadcast. I guess I should be thankful, though. This year Jaemin and I got some awards for DREAM’s comeback, though I’ve heard rumours from our new manager that it might be our last. And while it was so nice to win something on such a large stage — such a large scale — I’m exhausted. I think we’ve had nearly twenty stages all together in the past week and a half. There was our DREAM stages, the ones for NCT, the collaborations… but then, too, maybe I’m being too weak about it.

Actually, I think I had the easy end of things. Jaemin had to MC some things, too, and he was the one who had to prepare for most of the talking whenever we had to make comments — the hyungs too, they had their own subunit stages and drama shootings and OST recordings… I really shouldn’t be complaining so much.

Okay, keep this a secret, but I’m going to the practice room. Wish me luck, I’ll work harder! 


	35. Chapter 35

**Calabasas Manifest, Minute 50:13 of 1:34:11**

**_Play?_ **

It’s Yangyang again. He’s outside, this time — a backyard? A park? It’s unclear, but he’s clearly familiar with his environment as he ambles along, his walk more of a jaunt than anything else. Every so often his gaze slides to the camera with a sly smile, as if he holds all the secrets of the world behind his perfectly veneered teeth. Now, in motion, it’s more obvious than every just  _ how _ comfortable he is on the other end of the camera, how he seems to revel in its scrutiny.

His nametag shows up again, ten seconds, this time the soft green of the summertime plants surrounding him.

_ Yangyang Liu _ ,  _ Ex-Stunt Double, 42 years old. Dusseldorf, Germany _ .

The questions are cut out again, leaving Yangyang’s answers up to interpretation — but his very first statement leaves no room for guesses.

“Well,” he begins, turning on his heel to begin walking like a tour guide, never missing a step even as he moves backwards, “that’s a bit of a hard question to answer. The lines of what’s a “cult” and what’s not can be very blurry. It all depends on who you ask… some people would say religion is a cult, you know? And people who are definitely in cults right now would deny that they are, right?”

He pauses, sharp eyes narrowing in the smallest gesture of glee, “But I guess in this case you’re asking me. I want to say no, just to preserve my own reputation, but yeah, it was. It was, and I — I don’t want to sound too cocky here, but I knew it was the whole time. I mean, how often do you get to hear someone say hey, I was a part of a blood cult and survived? It’s a great party story, trust me.”

He says it with such lightness and such ease that every admission he makes almost float away into the air, completely unrecognizable as the things they mean. The camera pauses for half a second, dropping from Yangyang’s beatific smile, but it’s so brief only the most observant viewer would catch it.

The next question is less obvious, but Yangyang replies just as quickly. “I first met Sicheng when I was… hmm, sixteen, or so? My father’s company — he did something in finance, I don’t know much more than that — was one of the first investors in the subdivision Sicheng started. On paper, originally, I mean, it was supposed to be about promoting culture and giving back to Sicheng’s home province. That’s what I remember about him, actually, my first impression. No one knew where he’d come from, how he’d gotten where he was — all anyone knew was that he was from some town where people still actually spoke in dialect and that he’d graduated early with honors and that he was damn good at whatever he put his mind to.” 

Yangyang’s eyes catch the camera, piercing through the lens, as if he present in this exact moment, staring, and not on a screen four feet away. He looks more serious than he ever has before.

“But I guess I’m not really answering your question, am I? Well, like I said, I met him when I was sixteen, so that’s when his career really took off. You could say that’s when it started. But if you’re asking about when Renjun— when the  _ end _ started…”

He trails off, as if reminiscing in a fond memory.

“It was in 2020 or 2021… wow, over twenty years ago, now. Or you could even say 2018, I think. Sicheng first heard about Renjun when he was debuting in China… I think it was around 2018. The end of the year. But — I mean, you know the story. I only knew Renjun for two years, I think. He came to LA for that movie and I met him there — we were all working on set, you know? On paper, I was a stunt-double for some of the extra characters, but in reality I was kind of like Sicheng’s protege, like, his little brother, maybe? Or I guess you could even call Renjun his protege, depending on how you think about it.  _ Muse _ might be a better word, but — sorry, it just sounds fucking stupid, I can’t help myself. Like, can you imagine Sicheng saying, “Ah, my muse!”? Too fucking corny. So, anyway, it lasted for two years, early 2020 to the end of 2021.”

He had answered camly, but at the sound of the next question, his eyes light up with the impish glee he’d been missing. “You know this is, like, basically begging me to gossip, right? You okay with that? You sure?”

He seems to be met with an affirmative.

“Well, it’s actually pretty simple, if you knew everyone. No one’s seen Dejun in years, so it makes sense that he wouldn’t be willing to talk to you — or at least  _ I _ haven’t seen him, anyway, and I think Hendery is living some quiet life — ah, wait, I probably shouldn’t say. I think he’d get mad at me.”

Yangyang laughs as he says this, like he doesn’t actually care whether or not Hendery’s privacy is disturbed. 

“I guess I can just tell you that there’s a reason he was always working  _ behind _ the camera instead of in front of it? Obviously Sicheng can’t talk to you. And Kun… I think, after Lucas, he was the first to start regretting it. Or maybe before. I don’t know. And I feel like the other two are obvious — Ten’s smart and Lucas is a good person. They’re good storytellers. As for myself, I just had nothing better to do and I thought it would be kinda fun. Bit of a bad habit of mine, really. Wait-”

He stops walking for the first time during the entire conversation, narrowing his eyes at the camera before looking out at whatever is ahead of him. The camera pans to a river, the sun beginning to set over treetops on the opposite bank. Yangyang looks back at the camera. It meets his gaze. 

“When you said that the three of us were the only ones on the inside willing to talk to you… did that include Renjun?”

**_Pause?_ **


	36. Chapter 36

CO — STAR 5分钟前  
**Your day at a glance  
** Consider the possibility that the calls are coming from inside the house.

CO — STAR 23小时前  
**Your day at a glance  
** Don’t try to crawl up inside other people. They are not your home.

CO — STAR 2天前  
**Your day at a glance  
** Do you believe you have to destroy yourself to become what someone else loves?


	37. Chapter 37

**Calabasas Manifest, Minute 13:04 of 1:34:11**

**_Play?_ **

This interview takes place at a poolside, one lone man sprawled in a swimsuit on an outdoor chaise, striped towel under him perfectly beachy. His eyes are closed, his skin perfect and dewy despite the signs of age hidden — and truly, they are hidden — in his appearance. He radiates serenity, a cat asleep in the sun. 

His nametag shows up, ten seconds just like Yangyang’s, the same artificial blue as the poolwater.

_ Jeno Lee _ ,  _ Actor, Model, goopMen Brand Representative, 42 years old. Calabasas, California _ .

He opens his eyes, and smiles. “Hi,” he says, softly, “thanks for thinking I’m important enough to interview. Haha.” His laugh comes out a little late and a little awkward, as self-deprecating as the sentence preceding it, but it’s utterly charming, as picturesque as the beautiful house (mansion?) just out of focus behind him.

“Actually,” he starts, clearly responding from some inaudible question, “I didn’t meet Renjun until after he- after the fact, I guess you could say? I kind of knew who he was, vaguely, because Hyuck, my — well, Donghyuck Lee, I’m sure you’re interviewing him for this as well — was really into learning K-pop dances at the time, and Renjun’s group, I forget their name at the moment, was one of his favorites to cover. I remember at the time I was really shocked that they brought him all the way over to the states, and for the role that he played… it did seem odd. It’s funny how gut feelings can do that, isn’t it?” 

He laughs again, just as softly as before, but his words bely a teasing intellect and a sharp memory. These are stories from two decades past in a history that’s only his by association, after all.

“Really, the only person involved in all this who I know anything about is Mark. Well, I  _ had _ met Ten, before, but not in any sort of… relevant setting, you could say? So it really would be best if you just asked me about Mark,” he says, and there’s a moment of silence before he adds, “because I don’t know if I could really answer anything else, after all? I really was only distantly involved…”

Another censored question.

“Well, we all kind of  _ knew _ something was up with Mark. We might not be the closest anymore — we weren’t, even back then, but, you know — but I’ve known him since he was a kid. Since we were both kids. I’ve always been able to tell when something was  _ up _ , with Mark, because of that. Sort of like a brother, maybe? But at the time…” 

Jeno makes a face, scrunching up just like his smile, but not half as pleasant. One of fond frustration, perhaps. 

“You know the phrase one step forward, two steps back? That’s kind of what Mark’s life was like at the time. Your early twenties, you know? And there wasn’t really anyone there for him, either. We weren’t close, and he and Donghyuck were really just work friends — a lot of the only support that Mark was getting was just on his professional front. That’s one of my regrets, I think. My PR person at the time… well, when Mark was  _ really _ starting to spiral, when we were still teenagers and every day felt like a year — I mean, I just want you to remember that we were growing up in Hollywood in the early 2000s. It was a dangerous place for a teenage boy to grow up. It probably still is, and always will be. Anyway,”

He clears his throat, for the first time really looking his age, or perhaps older, a wizened kind of sadness overtaking his handsome face.

“Anyway, I sort of… abandoned Mark at that time. Our careers diverged. He kept trying to be an actor, I left the public eye for a bit, worked behind the scenes, did a few ads. Then he went to rehab, and I really didn’t see him again until we were something more like adults. Renjun met him, too, right around the same time. Only a few months later, if I’m remembering right.”

He hums, nodding. “At the time our relationship was the best it’s been since we were kids. As, well, you know, Mark’s always been… open-minded? Willing to take a risk? I guess that’s how I should say it, isn’t it? And I was already working for goop, by then, and at the time, alternative — well, let’s just call them substances — alternative substances were very popular. I mean, weed was legal, but there’s a lot more out there than that. I knew things, just by proxy, of course, and so when he asked me questions, I would answer them. It was almost entirely over text… I don’t think I saw him in person from the time that we were sixteen until Johnny’s wedding, when we were twenty-seven.”

He nods one last time, as if confirming the dates in his head. For a brief moment his face grows serious, somber, and the camera follows his gaze out to the Hollywood hills, the sprawl of urban Los Angeles from his cliffside home. It’s beautiful, it’s expansive, but the cut is brief, returning to Jeno’s peaceful face almost immediately.

“I don’t know the details, but I think something about the information I gave him — the things he was taking, and who knows what it was — was involved with his relationship with Renjun, and maybe how it fell apart. I mean,” and Jeno smiles, one last time, this handsome man in a beautiful city, lounging by an infinity pool, somehow not at all cheapened by the sheer  _ excess _ surrounding him on all sides. He is, without a doubt, beautiful, and it seems that in his smile are all the truths in the world, even if he refuses to acknowledge it himself, “but I really don’t know anything more about everything that happened. I wish I did but… you outgrow people, sometimes, you know? The world moves so fast, these days.”

**_Pause?_ **


	38. Chapter 38

By the time Renjun comes to, the sun is already shining California golden through Sicheng’s linen curtains. His tongue is dry and sour in his mouth, his eyes gummy and aching. Slowly, head pounding with — What did he _do_ last night? When was the last time he _ate_ something? — he accounts for all his body parts, from the bruised nail of his left pinky toe to the splitting silver ends of his hair. Everything is there.

His heart beats too-fast in his chest. It’s like he can feel the bottoms of his lungs, each individual push-and-pull of his diaphragm.

After a couple breathing cycles, he finally feels human enough to move. It’s in jarring, stuttering motions, though. He swings one leg over the edge of the bed he’s lying on, sinfully plush in the way Sicheng likes his furniture, and then the next, his feet just barely brushing the ground.

He has to take a break to breathe. In and out, and in, and out, and in—

He puts his feet all the way on the floor. For the first time, he notices the sound of voices, muffled in the way that human speech is when travelling across space. By the relative quiet of the sound, or in other words, the utter _lack_ of Lucas or Yangyang or Dejun’s dramatics, Renjun assumes that it’s Sicheng or Kun or maybe even Ten talking. He considers his options. 

If it’s any of the three it probably is outside the door, and therefore between Renjun and an Uber back to his own apartment somewhere in the suburbs of LA, paid for by SM, then they will inevitably drag him into conversation and he’ll have to stay for much longer than he’d like.

On the other hand, he can lay here for a while longer, maybe go back to sleep… but then there is the chance that instead of leaving, the other person in the house will come to look for him, and then he’s stuck in the same position he would be if he just tried to leave from the start.

It’s really a choice of now or later.

In the end, his desire for a glass of water wins out.

With a short, airy sigh, Renjun pushes himself off the bed. Surprisingly, he’s strong enough to stand — but still, walking pulls at sore, tender muscles, and his joints ache almost audibly with every step. It’s like this every time he wakes up at Sicheng’s house, his memories of the night previous fuzzy and disjointed. It’s like when he first met Mark, and would drink too must just for an excuse to lean on his shoulder-

“Oh, Renjun, you’re up,” Sicheng says in Mandarin, putting his iPhone face-down on the marble countertop.

Renjun nods, the strength to reply escaping him like a fledgling bird leaving the nest. Slowly, he walks over to the same counter Sicheng is leaning against, and pours himself a glass of water out of the filter. He’s acutely aware of the cold seeping into him from the matching marble floor, the way it rises out of those grand, beautiful swirls into his flesh and paralyzes him.

Sicheng takes one step, two steps to close the gap between them. 

Renjun puts his glass back down on the counter with a sharp _clink_ , emptied.

They make eye contact. Renjun feels like he’s staring at the sun, like one more second and his cells will begin to deteriorate-

Sicheng reaches out and presses a hand where Renjun’s neck meets his shoulder, where the muscle is always the tightest. Renjun almost jumps, but he doesn’t, something holding him back. Sicheng’s fingers press, gentle and strong all at once, into the flesh there, tracing the lines of muscles down, down, _down_ , banishing the tension from Renjun’s shoulders. Two of his fingers — long, elegant fingers, pianist’s fingers, sculptor’s fingers — come back up and rest at Renjun’s pulsepoint, tucked just under the curve of his jaw.

For a brief moment, a split second, he feels his heart jackrabbit, a neverending _durhum-durhum-durhum_ all the way to the tips of his ears, but like magic, like instinct, it slows to something languid, something soft and distant.

_Larghetto,_ written in the corner of a ballad he once wanted to sing.

_One and two and three-_

The voice of his choreographer, counting out the beats, but in slow motion, underwater, upside down. So far away.

He blinks, unable to look away from Sicheng’s face.

The sun.

Or a star?

He’s not quite sure — he’s never been very good at science. He used to daydream about the universe, but what good is that? When this-

He blinks again, gaze trained on the right corner of Sicheng’s gentle, toothless smile, the way it’s lifted ever so slightly.

“Ahh,” Sicheng breathes, “I’ve been too harsh on you, Renjun. Such a good boy.”

His fingers are still massaging Renjun’s shoulder, but Renjun’s mind is stuck on Sicheng’s words, a broken record, fixated on that one syllable, the starting _g-_ replaying over and over in his head. He hasn’t heard that word in so many years. Not since his childhood, maybe.

The floor doesn't feel as cold anymore.

Suddenly, he feels like crying.


	39. Chapter 39

**emma is missing renjun** 😢 _@injooniebb_ · 5min  
almost two weeks no renjun update…

**HARLEY!!** _@sacraficist_ · 11min  
@HUANGRENJUN_OFFICIAL post smn king <3

🦊 **🐰** _@jaemrenluvy_ · 2hrs  
this is going to be kind of a rant thread but honestly?? i’m so angry at sm right now, they never promote their artists properly, especially not their CHINESE artists, aka renjun. i know i’m mostly a jaemren/nct dream account, but i really can’t stand this anymore... [1/6]

🦊🐰 _@jaemrenluvy_ · 2hrs  
@jaemrenluvy and if you disagree and say that this is what renjun wants, are u rly a renjun stan? do you know him personally? would you want to be ripped away from your friends and groupmates and then sent to two different foreign countries in a row??? i’m all for the rolo [2/6]

🦊🐰 _@jaemrenluvy_ · 2hrs  
@jaemrenluvy stream graduation, btw, but sending him to be some extra on an american film is just their way of getting rid of him? i mean, think about how much more promo nct has gotten since he went to china? the decision for him to feature in that scifi horror film (idr the name) [3/6]

**🦊🐰** _@jaemrenluvy_ · 2hrs  
@jaemrenluvy is just so random? like renjun has never expressed any real interest in gory horror or that kind of scifi at all? and for all we know he’s been completely blocked from talking to the other boys in nct… the last time renjun was posted on an nct social media account was [4/6]

**🦊🐰** _@jaemrenluvy_ · 2hrs  
@jaemrenluvy in 2018. three YEARS ago. tell me that’s not mistreatment. idk how the rest of the fandom can stand this, but wbk u all dont care about renjun except to say that nct is big in the chinese market… and now he’s been offline entirely for two weeks?? [5/6]

  
  


**🦊🐰** _@jaemrenluvy_ · 2hrs  
@jaemrenluvy call me delulu or whatever, but for all we know his new mystery american management could be holding him hostage or something, like what the fuck. that’s all i have to say for now but like.. the rest of you ‘czennies’ need to step up. #RENJUNareyouOK [6/6]


	40. Chapter 40

It is two o'clock in the afternoon on a Thursday. The sun is beating down, hot and unforgiving, on Mark’s chest. He raises a hand to shade his eyes from the glare, squinting at the building in front of him.

It’s a grandiose, sprawling thing, like any of the other homes in this particular Calabasas neighborhood, but there’s something different about this one. It doesn’t have a Spanish roof or a Greco-Roman fountain, no cherub pissing onto the driveway. 

Instead, it’s as sleek as it is massive. The words that come to him remind Mark of nature documentaries, the same ones used to describe predators at the top of the food chain. Streamlined. Elegant. Sharp and intimidating.

Half of the walls are glass and the rest some kind of smooth, dark stone. The yard is filled with pure-white rocks and classic cacti and massive, abstract statues of carved petrified wood.

It’s very eco-friendly, Mark thinks absently.

Not quite what he expected of Sicheng Dong, but it’s not like he had anything to go by, really. The man is an enigma, known only to Mark by Renjun’s passing mentions of meetings and required company dinners. Mark knows he’s on the quiet side, and young for how successful he is. 

Mark knows more about Sicheng Dong than the whole of the English internet. 

He only stumbled upon his address by sheer dumb luck.

Six hours into a Netflix binge, high out of his mind, the words ‘reclusive Chinese buyer newly interested in the American film scene’ had caught on his brain like plastic waste on a sea creature and refused to let go.

Renjun, he’d thought, Renjun’s Sicheng. No, wait, Sicheng’s Renjun—? Hold on.

He started the episode from the beginning, zeroing in on the real estate drama like his life depended on it. It almost felt like it did. Everything added up, the time of the show’s filming and the start of WuYueVision’s American activities, the mysterious personality of the Chinese buyer, and then there was that one single slip.

The real estate agent brought her phone to the side of her botox-smooth face. Mark leaned in so close to his flatscreen he began to slide off the edge of his couch. “Hello?” She said, her nightingale voice coming through his surround sound speakers like the word of God, “Oh, Mr. Dong!”

The cameras cut to a confessional immediately after. She didn’t pronounce ‘Dong’ right, but then neither does Mark. He wasn’t any good at speaking Chinese, no matter how many times Renjun made him repeat a phrase.

His hands grabbed the remote, sweaty but steady in rewinding to the part of the show that sold the listing. The address was right there, on the screen.

A bead of sweat rolls down the back of his neck.

Over the gates, the same stone as the house, and through one of those wall-sized windows, Mark can see a person moving.

Grown-out silver hair. An oversized white tee shirt, sleeves going all the way down to the elbows. A silhouette he could’ve been able to draw from memory, if he could draw.

Renjun. 

Mark pulls out his phone, presses ‘call’, and for the first time since the fight with his parents that left a fifteen year old boy alone in Los Angeles, he prays.


	41. Chapter 41

The gates open and close in less than a minute, Renjun’s slim figure slipping out through without so much as a sound.

Silently, Dejun watches him go from the sunbed in the rock garden. It’s not as though he can do anything about it — his crutches are leaned against the side of the house, out of reach until Sicheng comes back outside.

The sun is supposed to be good for him. It will help him heal, ease his pain. Sicheng told him so. It’s heavy, like a blanket, the heat.

But despite it all, Dejun’s mind is sharp, from the pain of his swollen ankles — _and_ his general distrust of Renjun.

The rest of the family, from Kun to Yangyang to himself, have been with Sicheng since he was in China. They watched his empire grow, assisted in its spread. They have a bond, Dejun thinks, that cannot be so easily matched as a couple of busy months in LA.

He has seen the others at their rawest, most vulnerable, and they’ve seen him.

Renjun? Renjun only speaks to Sicheng, perhaps Ten on occasion, and moves in and out of their home like he doesn’t live their at all.

As far as Dejun is concerned, he has no sense of loyalty whatsoever.

If he could run right now —

He would have stopped Renjun from opening the gate, from leaving. No, he would have run up to the car, hidden just behind the fence, and punched its driver right in the face, stopped him from meeting Renjun at all.

His family may think Dejun is a little stupid, but he knows loyalty better than any of them. _He’s_ been with Sicheng since the beginning. He was the first one to follow Sicheng’s light.

He knows when someone is lying. 

Renjun can’t see Sicheng’s brilliance at all. His heart is not at home. It infuriates Dejun, burns him up more than this Los Angeles sun ever could.

“Mark!” And there it is, Renjun’s voice, following the sound of a phone ringing on full volume. So loud and clumsy it carries over the fence. What’s the point of hiding your car if Renjun’s just going to announce your presence? Idiot.

At least he has the good sense to speak at a more normal volume. Dejun can only make out certain words: “I had to”, “Miss you”, “What happened?”

Renjun’s sullen silence. 

Dejun’s ears strain. Waiting, waiting, _waiting_.

“Let’s go somewhere else and talk.”

Dejun has pulled himself to the very edge of the sunbed, leaning as close as he can to the gate, ignoring the amount of pain shooting up his legs—

There it is. He knew it. 

Secrets. There is nothing Dejun couldn’t say here, in front of his home, his family, his light.

Renjun is dishonest. Renjun is a fraud. Renjun is undeserving. Renjun does not belong.

He can’t. Dejun is certain.

Not when he is still allowing himself these dangerous connections to the outside world, not when he still walks past the gate, not when he sounds so fond of a voice that is not Sicheng’s.

“Okay, Renjun, let’s do that. Whatever you want.”

A traitor, Dejun decides, as he settles back into the most comfortable position he can, any groans of pain well-hidden by the sound of Mark Lee’s car starting up and driving away, Renjun comfortable in its air-conditioned passenger seat.

A traitor, indeed.

A small part of him, so shrunken and starved it no longer has a voice, so thoroughly ignored it has fallen out of his mind, heart, and soul to seek refuge somewhere behind his gallbladder, realizes it cannot remember the last time anyone cared what _Dejun_ wanted.


	42. Chapter 42

**[ TO: Ten | FROM: Mark’s iPhone ]**

Wednesday 9:21PM did u know   
_Wednesday 9:21PM_ renjun said it was the people who brought him onto 2110   
Read 10:00P.M.   
_Wednesday 11:52PM_ fuck you.

**[ TO: Mark’s iPhone | FROM: Ten ]**

_Thursday 6:07AM_ It’s hollywood mark. Mr. dong is an important man   
_Thursday 6:07AM_ Here and in asia   
_Thursday 6:07AM_ Hes basically promised to fund all my movies under his company so i couldnt tell u. Im sorry this happened but theres nothing anyone could do about it   
_Thursday 6:08AM_ U wanna come over for some wine this weekend? Johnny said ur allowed to   
Your message cannot be delivered.


	43. Chapter 43

HE HAS RETURNED.

HOMECOMING!

CELEBRATION!

OH__

THIS IS NOT A CELEBRATION.

THE JUDGE READIES HIS GAVEL. THE COURT TENSES.

THE DEFENDANT IS AFRAID OF THE LIGHT.

DEFENDANT? THE CROWD WHISPERS. NO, THE CROWD HISSES.

NO! TRAITOR.

TRAITOR! THE PEOPLE DECLARE.

THE PROSECUTOR SMILES. HE HAS THE WILL.

HE OPENS HIS MOUTH__

_BANG! BANG!_

THE JUDGE THROWS HIS GAVEL.

THE DEFENDANT IS ON THE GROUND. HE IS GUILTY, GUILTY, _GUILTY?_

traitor… THE CROWD IS SALIVATING. THEY ARE CORRECT!

THE CASE IS CLOSED.

THIS IS NOT A CELEBRATION__ THIS IS NOT A TRIAL__ THIS IS

THE CROWD HOLDS ITS BREATH.

A PUNISHMENT, THE PROSECUTOR PULLS THE DEFENDANT TO HIS FEET.

THEY KISS.

THE CROWD SCREAMS.

_no, no no_

THE PROSECUTOR STRIKES THE DEFENDANT. HE FALLS TO THE FLOOR AGAIN.

AGAIN.

AGAIN.

THE PROSECUTOR STRIKES THE DEFENDANT AGAIN.

THE BLOOD ON THE COURTROOM FLOOR TRICKLES DOWNWARDS.

THE JUDGE BANGS HIS GAVEL.

The floor is uneven, built on the slant of a hill. It’s slight enough that it’s gone unnoticed until now, Hendery notices, which he’s not sure is impressive or depressing. Without the spill that’s slowly sinking into the hardwood flooring, staining it an even deeper cherry, would they have ever noticed?

ORDER! ORDER IN THE COURT!

THE CROWD IS STILL SCREAMING.

EACH OF THE PROSECUTOR’S TEETH ARE OUTLINED IN CRIMSON.

THE DEFENDANT HAS LOST HIS CLOTHES.

THE CROWD BANGS AGAINST THE WALLS.

_no no, no_

THE JUDGE IS SILENT.

THE PROSECUTOR PANTS, HIS BREATH HOT AND WET.

THE DEFENDANT SHIVERS__ THE PROSECUTOR LOOMS__ THE JUDGE

Never in his life has Hendery met anyone with as much energy as Dejun and Yangyang. They’re not quite evenly matched -- Yangyang is just slightly more ferocious, Dejun slightly more willing to obey -- but together they’re guaranteed to make quite a scene. Dejun is showing Yangyang up a little at the moment, because for all that Yangyang can turn stripping -- himself, or someone else -- into an event with a capital ‘E’, Hendery would never have guessed that human nails could leave marks in such a well-made wall. Dejun’s nails aren’t long, either, like Ten’s or -- but somehow the divots he’s creating must be nearly two centimeters deep, by Hendery’s approximation. They do not look like a human could create them at all, really, with how long and stark the gouges are. He leans in for a better look.

THE JUDGE DROPS HIS GAVEL.

 _no no no,_ THE CROWD WEEPS.

THE DEFENDANT CLOSES HIS EYES.

AH__

ACCEPTANCE.

THE PROSECUTOR HAS WON.

HE GRABS THE JUDGE’S GAVEL.

_CRACK! CRACK!_

THE DEFENDANT’S HAND SPASMS__ CLENCHES__ UNCLENCHES

THE COURTROOM DOOR OPENS.

 _yes, yes yes!_ THE CROWD SINGS.

GOD WALKS IN. DIVINE LIGHT FILLS THE COURTROOM.

THE BLOOD REFLECTS GOD’S IMAGE.

HE SILENCES THE CROWD.

HE PAYS THE JUDGE.

HE THANKS THE PROSECUTOR.

HE PARDONS THE DEFENDANT.

THE LIGHTS GO OUT.

Days later, Hendery cannot stop thinking about it. He has seen many things -- acts of violence and acts of love, genuine actions and shallow performances-for-stage -- but for some reason this is an image he cannot forget. The way the light had shone in, the way that Sicheng commanded power, and more than anything, the way that Renjun’s body had contorted. He looks down at himself, the way that he is held together by his skin. To think that it is such a fragile material, and yet so strong -- he pushes down in the center of his forearm, into the gap between his bones. Radius, ulna. He knows these words, and yet he does not think he has ever understood them as deeply as he does now, has never seen the colors of the body as vividly as he did then. He swallows the saliva that has built up in his mouth. Yangyang, shattering those two bones in Renjun’s bruised arm with such conviction on his face. Radius, ulna. Hendery has seen many, many things, but this memory will never leave him.


	44. Chapter 44

Mark’s dog is named Horangi. It makes Jeno laugh, but in all honesty, Mark would have renamed her if he had the chance — she just wouldn’t respond to anything else.

When he was barely eighteen and usually drunk or high out of his mind, it had been hilarious, to see a little baby Westie Terrier named after an animal she so distinctly was not, but now that he’s moved on, for the most part, her name just reminds him of all his old mistakes. 

He had not been a very good pet owner, not for a long time.

It’s no wonder she likes Jeno more than him.

Even now, Jeno’s the one holding her leash.

Well, technically Mark pays him to, as a dog-walker, but since he’s coming along with them this time it feels a little strange — like having a guest cook in his kitchen while he sits at the dining table waiting to be served. 

“So,” Jeno says, breaking the silence that’s lasted for a good block and a half, “why’d you call me, dude?”

His voice is probing, but in the same manner as a cat kneading against flesh — soft, gentle, not unpleasant. 

Mark’s first instinct is to lie, to taunt Jeno. Open his mouth and say, “Donghyuck told me to talk to you, because he’s never going to again.” It’s not true — probably, Mark hasn’t had much time to keep track of their relationship these days — but it’s possible, it would hurt Jeno. Mark could watch him crumble, just for the hell of it. 

But he doesn’t, and looking at the blades of grass growing in the sidewalk’s joints, instead asks,“Do you think you’re in love with Donghyuck.”

The sentence comes out fast and nervous, pitched down to reveal less. 

Jeno’s stride does not falter. Mark watches his hand loop once around Horangi’s leash, pulling her closer in to the sidewalk. He still takes a moment to answer.

“I think I could be,” he says, “if Donghyuck would let me.”

That one sentence feels very profound, to Mark, for some reason.

Jeno keeps talking, “But, I mean, you know how he is. He doesn’t- Well…” He trails off for just a moment, for the first time seeming as rawly _human_ as Mark feels, “Maybe it does mean I’m in love with him, since I keep hanging on, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.” 

They’ve reached the end of the block. Mark presses the pedestrian button, and they wait for the lights to change. 

“I mean, this might sound kinda controversial, but I think a little heartbreak is good for people,” Jeno says, and then says nothing else. 

Again, Mark finds that his immediate response is anger — _but haven’t I had enough heartbreak?_ He wants to demand, _has this world not chewed me up and hurt me enough?_

He finds that he doesn’t think that's wrong. He’s been in some very dark places, felt some very awful things. He thinks he deserves the chance to be angry.

Very slowly, it feels like the world is turning around the sun, and the days are getting longer. Spring is coming, and then summer.

“Renjun let me see him again,” he admits, quietly, as they cross the street, “for the first time in- I don’t know, weeks, at least.”

Jeno hums, understanding. “Oh, man. Did you talk?”

Horangi’s nails — neatly trimmed, by Jeno — click against the concrete. Mark can hardly bear to look at her, right now. Sometimes, Renjun had said—

“Not really,” He replies. “Mostly we ate. He told me he was starving, so I took him out to eat. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him eat that much at once before.” 

Renjun was never a big eater, even when they went to his favorite restaurants. Instead, he ate with his eyes, watching Mark — and everyone else in the restaurant — as they ate, the food as it appeared out of the kitchen, and then disappeared.

“But anyway, he’s staying with, with this like production guy,” and now the words are coming out, and Mark cannot stop them, and Jeno is looking at him instead of Horangi.

God, Mark wishes Jeno would just look look back down at the fucking dog, it’s what he’s paying him to do—

“And I know that like, relationships make the business happen and he’s like actually the one who brought Renjun onto the fucking movie, so _technically_ he’s the reason we met in the first place, but the one fucking question I had to ask Renjun was about these, when it got close to the end I swear he’d have like bruises or little cuts and shit and so I _asked him_ , what was fucking happening, like do I need to get help or something, and he just got all dead-eyed, God,” 

Mark raises a hand and presses it hard against his face, so hard he starts to see light again even with his eyes closed, and then lets go. Breathes in, out. They’re sitting at a bench, now, city-dirty, but Mark is glad for it. 

For Jeno, even though he won’t be able to stand being around him for at least a month after this.

“And he just said, like, ‘Sicheng needed me to’, like what the hell? Sicheng is the guy whose house he was at, by the way, the motherfucker I don’t fucking trust, because— I can’t figure out what Renjun means, but I just think he’s being hurt, and—”

Jeno’s hand lands heavily on his shoulder. He stops talking. For what feels like at least a minute, they just stare at each other, Mark’s wide eyes into Jeno’s half-smiling ones.

“I know you won’t believe me,” Jeno starts, still maintaining eye contact, “but dude, I get it.”

He looks down at Horangi, sitting politely between his feet, and when he looks back up he isn’t smiling anymore.

“But you have to respect what Renjun wants, too. He’s his own person — you can’t just go in there guns-ablazing with some heavy accusations just because you’re upset you’re not together anymore, y’know?”

Mark remembers that as much as he and Jeno are alike, they are very, _very_ different. Jeno feels, to him, unblemished and mature all at once. Like a giant baby, or maybe a CEO kindergartener. Mark feels more like a piece of shit. 

But still, it’s not just that Renjun left him. His hands had been shaking, just a little, when Mark dropped him off at that giant, foreboding house. It can’t just be that.

He reaches for Horangi’s leash, and it goes easily from Jeno’s hand. “Do you mind if I walk her the rest of the way back?”


	45. Chapter 45

This feels like desperation, maybe. Mark hasn’t heard from Renjun since their last meal at Haidilao, so through the connection of a connection of a friend, he’s managed to get the personal Kakao ID of the person who would — _should_ — have known Renjun best before all of this. Before Los Angeles and Event Horizon 2110 and, more than anything, before Sicheng.

He messaged ahead of time, setting up a time to talk — this feels like something too heavy, too close to talk about over text — and now he stands in his kitchen, overlooking the sprawling concrete jungle he lives in, and listens to the phone ring.

Ring, ring, ri—

“ _Yeoboseyo_?” An unfamiliar voice cuts in, speaking Korean in a lazy drawl.

It’s morning over there, Mark reminds himself, 10AM to his 6 in the evening. “Ah, hi, _annyeonghaseyo,_ ” he catches himself, feeling terribly exposed. With Renjun, it hadn’t been too bad, because Renjun was already juggling English. Chinese, Korean and maybe more. And he could understand Mark’s situation, only learning and speaking Korean at home, even if he turned out much more fluent than Mark could ever hope to be.

“It’s okay, we can speak English, I study it,” the man on the other end of the line says, his words fluid and comfortable, even if they are accented.

“Thank you,” Mark says, as genuinely as he can make himself sound, “Jaemin. Is that okay? Can I call you Jaemin?”

Jaemin makes a sound of assent. “Yes, that’s fine. I’ll call you Mark. What did you want to talk to me about?”

“I wanted to ask you…” he trails off, deciding to switch from holding his phone to his ear to putting it on the marble counter on speaker, “I wanted to ask you about what Renjun was like, when you were with him.”

Jaemin lets out a long, soft ‘ _ohh_ ’. He’s quiet for a while. “It’s been a long time, actually,” he says, “Over a year, since I saw him.”

Mark hadn’t known that. For that year, then, what had Renjun been doing? Who had been with him, who had he relied on? Had there been anyone at all?

He doesn’t have anything to say, struck dumb, but luckily Jaemin continues on without needing him to.

“It wasn’t very easy for him, when he was still with us in Korea. One of the… staff? I think that’s the best word, didn’t like him very much. It made life very hard for him. And… until the end, when he was leaving, I don’t think the rest of us really… understood that. We never noticed.”

“Oh,” Mark replies, still at a loss for words. “Did Renjun-”

He’s not sure how to ask the words that are at the tip of his tongue.

“He never… talked to you? Never complained? I mean-” He has to hold himself back from sharing way too much personal information.

 _When I hated being an ‘_ entertainer _’ I acted out like crazy and made life living hell for everyone around me. When I felt like I was being cheated I cheated back. I was sixteen, and every day felt like the world was about to end._

To imagine someone (edit: a teenager) facing the seven billion eyes of the world and then several dozen prying _hands_ and having no response other than Renjun’s perfect, toothless smile is — unthinkable, for him, really.

“Well…” Jaemin sounds conflicted on the other end of the line. “I mean,” he tries again, and then, “I’m really sorry, can we switch to Korean? I’m afraid this will lose the nuance if I speak English. I’m still working on vocab.”

“Y-yeah, sure, I’m not super fluent but,” he figures it’ll be better than Jaemin trying to paint the picture of Renjun’s past in English, and really Mark should be the one speaking Korean here, not forcing Jaemin to speak English — but that’s an unrelated type of guilt.

“Actually,” Mark interrupts, just as he hears Jaemin take in a fresh breath, “do you mind if I record this call? So I can translate more properly later? I swear I won’t do anything with the recording other than that, I just don’t think I’ll be able to, like, like you said, get all the nuance because my Korean is really…” He makes a grimacing sound as an explanation.

There’s a long moment of silence.

Mark thinks that Jaemin might just hang up now — he understands that he might be crossing lines with his request.

“I’m sorry,” Jaemin says, at last, every syllable weighted down with intention, “I don’t think I heard what you just said? Do you mind if I get started?”

It’s as much of a ‘yes, go ahead!’ as Mark is ever going to get.

He scrambles to grab his laptop, and puts his phone on speaker, preparing to record.

“Okay,” he says, breathing into the phone more than he probably should, “I’m ready. Go ahead.”

And then Jaemin starts talking. His voice is lilting and gravelly, somehow reminiscent of all the swings and seesaws and pebbles-in-velcro-sneakers of children’s playgrounds. Mark was right — he can only understand snippets of what Jaemin’s saying, and even then he’s likely misunderstanding some of it.

Angry sometimes, but thoughtful

I heard his stomach

It was raining

I got a phonecall… A Chinese number

Our debut— ah, the second one, just us

I missed him, but I didn’t know if I could say it

Like a childhood friend?

I don’t know him anymore

But anyway, I messed up.

The staff yelled at us, and yelled their apology, too.

I’m happier now, and—

Jaemin has been talking for so long Mark finds himself in a sort of meditative state, a result of the idol’s voice; somehow, he feels closer to Renjun because of it.

Jaemin clears his throat. “That’s all I can think of right now,” he says, switching back to English smoothly, “but please call me again if you have any questions about what I said. And tell Renjun to call me — tell him I mean it when I say I miss him, I’m not just… joking. Okay?”

“Uh, y-yeah,” Mark replies, his own voice gone still from sitting still and silent for longer than he’s used to, “I’ll do that. Thank you, Jaemin?”

Jaemin’s smile is audible. “You’re welcome. Glad to help. And then…” his voice rises in pitch suddenly, “Byebye!”

“Bye… bye?”

Jaemin hangs up, hopefully leaving Mark with more pieces to the infinitely-difficult puzzle of Renjun Huang than he had before.


	46. Chapter 46

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so there's a little bit of description of gore in this chapter, please tread lightly!

_**POLAROID 1, TAKEN 3:10AM** _

The polaroid is split in half — half dark and half light, half backdrop and half the edge of a hip. There’s a belly button in the top right corner, darkened ever so slightly by the flash’s vignette, and just off-center lies the stark, diagonal shadow of a hip bone. In the bottom right corner is another shadow, in the same direction as the other, but much gentler, lighter, the subtlest suggestion of genitals just out of frame. Clearly, the owner of this body is small, thin — perhaps even unhealthy, if the colors of the polaroid are to be believed, but it’s hard to tell. Perfectly equidistant between the belly button and the hip bone there are two cuts of surgical precision, a perfect right angle. Both continue on further up and across the torso, beyond the eye of the photograph. The skin is pulled back, like a sheet of origami paper folded on the diagonal, being held by two large needles, making an ‘X’ that’s almost reminiscent of hair barrettes. That triangular window reveals fat and muscle, shiny from the camera flash. There’s the suggestion of abdominal muscles, from the horizontal stretch of the muscles nearest the right corner, and the way the rest on the outside appear to cradle them, curving down towards the bottom. Even a few tendons and other bits of connective tissue are visible around the edges of the cut, colder and shinier than the vague redness of the fat and muscle.

_**POLAROID 2, TAKEN 4:34AM** _

Dejun, except, no, that’s not Dejun at all. The entire polaroid is dark except for two half-ovals of shocking, pure white, exactly where his eyes should be. The background is dark, impossible, abyssal black, but the rest of him is dark, too — a warm, medium grey, like the coat of a purebred cat — not the color a person should be at all. From his hair to his teeth to the buttons of his shirt, he’s entirely this one color, smiling.

_**POLAROID 3, TAKEN 6:51AM** _

Light. The line where wall meets floor lies about a third of the way down the polaroid; this one is horizontal, and so bright it almost hurts to look at it. The bottom two thirds are taken up by a body, by Renjun’s body. He’s asleep or unconscious or just very relaxed, his eyes closed and limbs limp. His left cheek brushes against the floor ever so slightly. He’s nude, as pale and bare as his surroundings — the darkest shadow in the entire polaroid is the shadow where his body meets the floor, but other than that almost everything is some shade of white. Actually — no, hold on. There’s a second, dark line, but it’s so small and well-hidden by the angle the photo was taken it’s almost impossible to see. Well, it’s more like two lines, isn’t it? One lies perfectly straight down his right side, from the bottom of his ribs to the middle of his hips, and the other is perpendicular, from one side of the pelvis to the other. They’re incredibly thin, incredibly precise — if not for this precision they would look like simple faults of the photograph, dust or lint or clutter in the lens.


	47. Chapter 47

Yukhei locks the bathroom door behind him. He turns the shower on. He’s still clothed. He doesn’t get in. His hands shake. He walks to the corner of the room farthest from the shower and the door, and slides down against the wall to sit on the floor.

He breathes in, five seconds. Holds for four. Exhales seven.

Blinks once, twice.

He slides his phone out of his back pocket and turns it on, Bella lockscreen coming to life. He pauses again, listening intently for the sound of footsteps beyond the water. There’s nothing, or at least nothing he can hear.

There’s a phone number scribbled on the inside of his elbow in pen, his own messy handwriting. He hardly needs to look at it — he’s been repeating the numbers in his head ever since he stole them off of Renjun’s phone, dropped in the rock garden outside without a care at all. 

He types them into his phone, and checks the numbers, and double-checks them.

He hits call.

It rings.

Rings.

Rings.

Rings.

 _Pick up, damn it!_ He thinks, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth.

Rings.

“Uh, hello?” 

Yukhei clears his throat, somehow surprised he’s gotten this far.

“Is this, uh,” he freezes for an embarrassing moment, “Mark Lee?”

“Yeah, it is? Can I ask who this is? How did you get my number?” The voice on the other end has turned icy, nothing like the way it sounds in the movies. Yukhei inches closer to the toilet, suddenly aware that he might vomit. 

“I,” he tries, before a half-gasp forces its way out of him, “It’s, uh, no, I — Renjun.”

Mark is silent; Yukhei has no clue how to interpret it.

“My name is Yukhei Wong I’m a model I live with Renjun right now because of, but he’s, oh,”

He clears his throat one more time, arranges his thoughts into the neatest line he can manage. 

“I think he might die I don’t really know what happened I came home late but there’s a lot of blood please call the police I can’t but you, _please_ ,”

It comes out in a single breath, and he hears Mark inhale deeply, almost as if he’s doing it for him — Yukhei can hardly manage to keep the phone to his ear, much less worry about slowing the rapid in-in-in-out-out of his own breathing.

“What do you mean you ca—”

A knock on the bathroom door. Yukhei jumps, the edge of his watch clinking sharply against the toilet’s porcelain.

“Yukhei, ah,” Dejun slipping between Cantonese and Mandarin, sounding at once so much like home and like some slurring, awful impostor, “You’re taking _such_ a long shower today! Can I come in? Gege said my face is dirty again…”


	48. Chapter 48

2005年12月25日

这是董思成的秘密日记！别人不能看！

2005年12月26日

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

2019年3月23日

God was born in China. It won’t make sense to you, but it does. China has the largest population in the world, so of course God had the highest probability of being born there.

2019年3月24日

When God was born He was very poor, and His family suffered a lot. God suffered a lot, and learned to understand suffering, and pain, and hurting. He realized He was God and He saw the truth — you can’t have expected God came out of His mother’s womb and knew instantly He was God, right? He always knew He was different, but it took a little time, a little suffering for Him to realize His destiny.

2019年3月25日

He realized the systems of power. He worked very hard, from when He was very young, to use the systems that already existed to spread His message.

2019年3月26日

He met some angels. Like God Himself, They could not realize immediately that They were angels. He had to explain it to Them. He had to gain Their trust, He had to teach them His ways. How to realize that They are angels, and how to act properly like His angels. This would take time.

2019年3月27日

It would take practice. God has never been an angel, He is only God. It would take a bit of figuring out, what exactly an angel needs to do. He may already be a perfect teacher, but that does not mean angels will be perfect students. That, too, needs practice and time.

2019年3月28日

But God has plenty of time. He controls it, after all.


	49. Chapter 49

The sunlight just barely manages to make it into this room, this tiny apartment. Billy Taeil Moon is twenty-nine years old, and lives on the thirteenth floor of a small apartment building in Koreatown. The whole room is cluttered with notebooks and looseleaf paper, charging cables and half-empty pens. Taeil is sitting in his bed, his laptop screen open to the ‘How to Become a Member’ page of the Writer’s Guild of America West’s website.

Mark Lee is standing in the mess, wringing his hands, staring at Billy. 

“Please give Renjun a role on this movie, if you ask for it as the writer I’m sure Mr. Osaki will agree to it, like, he has to, right?”

Billy bites his lip, looking up at Mark with tired eyes. “I’m going to be honest, Mark,” he says, “This isn’t a great script. I’m just writing it to make rent. The media will make a joke out of you again. I don’t know why _you’re_ accepting this role, or why you’re trying to bring even more people on board… actually, you don’t need to answer that.”

“I can ask, for you, but don’t count on anything. His side will need to accept the offer, too, you know.”

Mark takes a step closer, maneuvering through mounds of empty Amazon packaging and computer paper. “Please make it a large enough role for them to accept, bro, please? Look, one of my closest friends is super close to Brad Falchuk, like he literally takes care of their cat, I’ll get him to give him one of your scripts. Please, dude, you don’t know how important this is.”

Billy puts his head in his hands, and then drags them down his face. It’s hard for Mark to believe that he’s older than him, that he’s built his own career from the ground up based on good writing alone. Billy looks very tired.

“Okay, okay,” Billy says, eventually, holding his hand out for Mark to shake, “I’ll do my best to convince Mr. Osaki, but it’s his debut show in the American market so I don’t know how willing he’ll be to take the risk.”

“Thank you so much, Billy, I really can’t explain to you how important this is!” Mark is already halfway across the room, nearly past the threshold. He _sounds_ genuine, but for some reason Billy feels like sighing.

“And you better get my scripts to Falchuk for real!” A door shuts. “You don’t know how many times I’ve already heard things like that…”

He looks back to his laptop, idly scrolls up and down the page again, looking at the membership requirements. He opens up Twitter in a new tab, switches to his fandom account. Dreams, dreams, dreams.


	50. Chapter 50

**[ TO: Mark’s iPhone | FROM: John Seo ]**

Tuesday 9:11A.M. Mark did you really take a role in Osaki’s teen drama

 _Tuesday 9:12A.M._ Can you at least let me and the rest of the team know before you take on projects

 _Tuesday 9:12A.M._ Especially when they’re so off-brand

 _Tuesday 9:13A.M._ Wait do you want to work on teen dramas? I thought you weren’t interested in those kinds of roles anymore but if that’s what you want there’s a new Netflix thing casting next month?

 _Tuesday 9:14A.M._ The point is Mark you need to communicate. Please!!!

**Read** 9:20A.M.


	51. Chapter 51

MALIBU/LOST HILLS SHERIFF’S STATION

NEWS RELEASE

CR# 10-2428 DATE/TIME 11/25/21 @ 1316

LOCATION 4200 block of Prado De Los Ciervos, Calabasas

TYPE OF INCIDENT Assault w/ Deadly Weapon (2cts), Attempted Murder (2cts), Possession of Controlled Substances (5cts), Distribution of Controlled Substances, Missing Person At Risk 

SUMMARY OF CRIME INCIDENT (If no arrest, include suspect info.) Information need not be released that: (1) would endanger the safety of a witness or other person; (2) would hamper successful completion of the investigation or related investigation; (3) is an analysis or conclusion of the investigating officer.

On November 25th, 2021 at 1:16 p.m. a 25-year-old Calabasas resident, Sicheng Dong, was arrested for attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and possession and distribution of controlled substances. Dong had been residing with the victims on the 4200 block of Prado De Los Ciervos in Calabasas where the incident occurred. Dong had been living there with the victims and four possible accomplices since he purchased the house in 2019. Only Dong, three victims, and one of the possible accomplices were at the location when the incident occurred. Two of the victims, a 21-year-old male and a 22-year-old male, were intoxicated with an unknown substance; according to the sober victim, Dong and at least one of his accomplices had been systematically administering these substances to the previous two victims prior to assaulting them since their arrival to the home. The sober victim, also a 22-year-old male, was attacked by one of the two intoxicated victims with a meat tenderizer but managed to contact the police and report the incident. Officers responded to the incident and arrested Dong and the accomplice without further incident, but the 22-year-old victim fled. The 21-year-old victim was sent to an urgent care facility in Los Angeles for a potential drug overdose, and the sober victim was treated at the scene for minor injuries. Dong and the accomplice were booked into the Los Angeles County jail for attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and possession and distribution of controlled substances. The other residents of the house/potential accomplices have been located and contacted to be questioned.

The 22-year-old victim’s identification papers found inside the house suggest his name is ‘Dong Xiaojun’, born August 8th, 1999 in China. However, examination of these documents suggests that they are fraudulent, and his real identity is unknown. He still has not been found, and is believed to be suffering from multiple stab wounds, a head wound, and intoxication from an unknown amount of illegal substances. He may be dangerous. Anyone having information regarding this investigation is requested to contact Officer Jung at the Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station of the Los Angeles County Police Department (818) 222 8900.


	52. Chapter 52

Mark knocks on the doorframe before he comes in. It’s just a formality, because Renjun can already see him fidgeting in the doorway. Mark watches his eyes drop, his chest rise. There might be a sigh, but he doesn’t hear anything.

“U-um,” Mark starts, taking Renjun’s acknowledgement as an okay to sit in the rolling chair beside the hospital bed, “Hey, Renjun.”

It’s incredibly lame.

Mark feels like a loser. He feels guilty. He’s a little terrified.

But it must be nothing in comparison to what Renjun feels, felt, what he’s gone through. Mark knows this, and it makes the rapid, jittery spirals of his own anxiety feel all the darker. Compared to the slick, stark whites of the hospital room, Mark is undeniably dirty, alive, crud built up under the whites of his fingernails. Compared to Renjun’s body — slighter than a ghost, paler than the sheets —he’s so healthy. He has no bruises, no scars, no fear.

“I would have come and seen you sooner, but…”

This, at least, is honest. He just doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

_But I feel like I’m partially responsible, but I feel like I should have rescued you, but I wasn’t sure if you’d be willing to see me, but I wasn’t sure you’d make it out alive, but I’m still in love with you and am I fucked up if I’d rather my last memory of you be a better one?_

“It’s fine,” Renjun says, “Mark.”

His voice, once Mark’s favorite sound, is dry and croaking, slowly splintering like a half-rotten piece of bark underfoot. Even this, Mark thinks, is damaged. And then he wants to smack himself.

He’s spent the past two weeks reading, trying to read, books for children and uber-dense scientific papers, medium.com articles and books so old the embossed gold lettering has nearly worn off. How to help a victim of abuse, how to treat them properly, what to do and what _not_ to do. He’s learned words like ‘ableism’ and ‘gaslighting’ and ‘pastoral counseling’. He thinks, maybe, that’s what his mom tried to sign him up for when he was fourteen.

The greatest crime is that he can’t stop seeing Renjun as this half-baked thing, this card-house person. He hates it, and maybe he hates Renjun a little bit because of it. Maybe it’s just because they haven’t spoken in nearly a month — the last time Mark saw him was when Renjun’s agent, his _new_ agent, facetimed to inform him that due to his current circumstances, Renjun had no plans to act in the coming year and he very respectfully has to turn down the role Director Osaki has so kindly offered.

He reaches for Renjun’s small hand, but gives up halfway through. Renjun holds both face-up, wrists exposed. There’s a hint of a scar up his forearm, under the nightgown, but there’s also the raised mark of being hooked up to the IV for so long.

Mark sits on his hand, instead, to stop it from getting any other stupid ideas. “I’m sorry,” he manages at last, and then it doesn’t stop coming, “I’m really fucking sorry, Renjun, because I knew — I knew something was, like, _off_ , but I never asked you any real questions, I mean. I never asked myself any real questions. I just assumed that you were fine and maybe you liked him better, or something, which sounds so terrible in retrospect and I was so, like, focused on _me_ for so long, I…”

His head is hung, his heart pounding. There’s a small family of wires and tubes snaking out from underneath Renjun’s hospital bed, connecting to various machines in the room.

“I’m sorry, Renjun, and I wanted to tell you that I still,” Mark is perhaps the greatest coward in the world, “I still love you, I’m still _in_ love with you, and I think I always will be. And I just wanted to let you know that, that no matter what happens, I want to be there for you.”

This part he’s practiced, rehearsed and memorized like lines for a role. They came out a little rough, but the general idea is still there. Hopefully. Not yet raising his gaze, he finishes: “I still do, Renjun.”

For approximately a minute, nothing happens at all. Mark counts the seconds in his head. One, twelve, fifty-three—

He looks up, directly into Renjun’s watery black eyes. Another minute, maybe more, maybe less, spent like that. Mark doesn’t count this time.

“Thank you,” Renjun says at last, “Thank you, Mark. I really appreciate it.”

Aside from the new fracture in his voice, there’s also a new earthiness, a heaviness. A finality. He takes his hand and it lands, not at all gracefully, on Mark’s shoulder.

Mark hardly feels anything at all. No weight, no heat. In all of his rehearsals of this moment, he had not predicted this response. On his good days, the Renjun in his mind would smile his small, witty smile and like offering Mark an elixir for eternal happiness, say ‘I love you too, I always have’. On his bad days, Renjun would take the nearest thing in reach and throw it at him, his face distorted by all the horrors he’d witnessed, “Fuck you, Mark Lee! Fuck you!”

Renjun does smile at him, but it’s flat and polite, almost parental. The smile the wise man gives the hero at the end of the movie, can’t you see it would always have turned out like this?

“I hope you’ve been well, Mark.” He takes his hand back, and Mark waits for its absence.

“I have been,” he says, no longer in the moment. He waits at Renjun’s bedside in silence until he works up the courage to leave, and then he goes, hands shaking.


	53. Chapter 53

**Calabasas Manifest, Minute 1:03:47 of 1:34:11**

**_Play?_ **

The room is committed to minimalism: stark white cabinets and a sleek, round-edged desk. The frosted glass wall in the back suggests an office building, and the matching chrome detailing screams luxury. A man with neatly coiffed black hair, long lashes, and a wide, white smile sits at the desk, his posture casual. A heavy watch glints in the light, half-hidden by the cuff of his button-down. A glass of iced black coffee makes a ring of condensation on the table.

 _Jaemin Na_ , his placard reads. _Investor, Humanitarian, Ex-member of NCT, 42 years old. Seoul, South Korea._

“Yes,” he says in Korean, subtitles overlaid in large white Arial, “the news didn’t break in Korea until a few months after he was already out of the hospital. Our PR department worked very hard at the time, they didn’t want the public reaction to add more stress to R-, Mr. Huang’s situation.”

He tilts his head like a dog when he listens to the follow-up question. There’s something sharp about him — an aura of intelligence, competence perhaps — but it’s tempered by the rest of his behavior, his nonchalance. It’s incredibly endearing, the way his humanity seems to leak out of him accidentally. He smiles, too, but it has none of Jeno’s blithe reassurances or Yangyang’s feral taunting.

Jaemin just looks _comfortable_ in front of the camera. He’s used to being watched closely, hunted for tells.

“No, no, it came out about Dong Sicheng and the rest of the people involved at the same time as in the rest of the world. They had no reason to protect them, after all. Maybe a few fans would have been keeping track of Mr Huang's management closely enough to figure it out, but I don’t think it was really noticed… _buut_ then again, I haven’t used social media since I was a teenager, so, you might need to double check me on that.” He says the last part cheekily, inviting his audience to chuckle with him about some inside joke. He grows serious again soon after.

“Well, by the time they did let the press publish it, Mr. Huang had already completed his goodbye concerts, wrapped up his contract termination. He might have already moved out of the country, I don’t remember.”

His voice drops into a stage whisper, and his thick, perfectly-shaped eyebrows wiggle once. “Usually, they make ending your contract as difficult for you and as beneficial for them as possible, I mean, this business, yes? But Mr. Huang — I don’t know if this was his idea or his lawyer advised it, or something — he walked into the meeting with all this photographic evidence of what he suffered and I’m sure he made some strong, probably true, claims about how they’d mistreated him as an artist and all of that, but they were very generous with him. It’s good they did, really he’s been through enough already.”

He makes his listening face again. “Ahhh, no, I’m sorry,” Jaemin says quickly, “I don’t think I can go into any more detail on that. Like I said, they were unusually generous, with him.” And then the wink-wink nudge-nudge laugh, another eyebrow wiggle. It’s incredibly choreographed, but subtly enough that only the most observant eyes could ever catch him.

Jaemin brightens up quickly at the next question, letting loose a series of laughs that seem to overtake his entire body, lasting for exactly seven seconds. His words come out perfectly clearly after: “Yes, we’re still close, we’ve been close ever since we met in 2014. I still talk to him frequently on the phone, yes, he’s one of my dear friends. Actually, I’ve given him this funny nickname in my contacts, would you like to see?”

_**Pause?** _


	54. Chapter 54

The truck slows to a complete halt. Sungchan takes one last furtive sip of water before picking the mic back up. He doesn’t bother looking out the window or opening the script booklet in the passenger seat beside him. This must be the hundredth or so time he’s done this — it’s a hell of a summer job, two tours a day five days a week. But it _does_ pay well, very well.

It’s also a little morally questionable, probably, considering these are real homes, real places, real people, real crimes, but on the sliding scale of things a fresh high-school grad could do to make forty bucks an hour in the middle of Los Angeles, it’s no big deal.

“ _Aaalright_ ,” he begins, putting on his public-speaking voice, a little too chipper and far too friendly, “for our next stop on the one and only Real Hollywood: True Crime tour, we find ourselves in front of the secluded Calabasas mansion that was once home to the Wu Yue Vision, or WAYV cult.”

He hears some chattering, laughing, shutter sounds from the tour-goers sitting in the truck’s open top behind him.

“Lasting from 2017 until November 25th, 2021, the WAYV cult isn’t the most notorious product of Hollywood’s dark underbelly. You may have never heard of it before. That would probably be because the celebrities involved weren’t quite Hollywood stars. You’re most likely to know Renjun Huang, a former K-Pop idol and Chinese actor who was well on his way to becoming one of China’s A-listers when this all went down. There’s also the director Ten Leechaiyapornkul, really the biggest name linked to this particular case, but he’s denied involvement in the cult... The leader of the cult was a man named Sicheng Dong, a businessman and producer who seemed to rise up from rural China to CEO of Wu Yue Vision’s LA Branch in the course of less than ten years. He’s been likened to a modern-day Jay Gatsby, wild parties included — that’s where this gets dark, really.”

He pauses for dramatic effect, his free hand absently dialling the AC up.

“Sicheng bought this house and slowly but surely began to fill it with young talent signed to Wu Yue Vision’s Los Angeles label — models, singers, actors, even an e-sports gamer and a stunt double. All seemed well for the team and their projects: work was flooding in, and they were succeeding in the American market. And then Renjun arrived.”

Sungchan finally looks out to the house they’re stopped in front of, all stony California modernism. Massive, too. He finds it hard to imagine that the horrors he’s about to describe actually happened here, less than ten years ago.

“If Sicheng is Gatsby, then maybe Renjun was Daisy. Or maybe he was Nick. It’s hard to say, and it all depends on how you look at the story. One way or another, Renjun was represented by Wu Yue Vision in the US, which got him a role on Chaiyapornkul’s box office success, Event Horizon 2110. He was even making friends with perennial Hollywood sweethearts like Mark Lee. But it seems like when the cameras were cut, Renjun was slowly but surely being inducted into the cult he was living with.”

“Now, we don’t have much information about what they actually believed, considering that Sicheng and his right-hand man, a would’ve-been singer named Dejun Xiao, are behind bars, Renjun has retreated from the public eye entirely, and the other members of the cult lost their careers, drifting away out into this wide world, but there _were_ some artifacts found when the police searched the house on that fateful day.”

“There were collections of polaroids, awful, bloody photographs—” Like most of the other stories he has to tell on these tours, Sungchan has never looked into this particular cult. He has no idea how horrible these pictures might be, and he’s not eager to do more than read the script he’s been given. “mostly of Renjun and Dejun, occasionally other members but never Sicheng, being cut and pinned open. They’ve been regarded as almost… artistic, by some true crime fanatics. There was also Sicheng’s diary, only written in eight times. ‘God was born in China,’ Sicheng wrote, ‘it won’t make sense to you, but it does.’"

"It seems, to the members of the cult, Sicheng was God himself. Whether the violence captured in those polaroids were acts of sacrifice or divine punishment… only the walls of that house know, now.”

Sungchan clears his throat as quietly as he can, and turns the AC back off. There’s a chill running up his spine.

“Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for the WAYV Cult on today's tour. We offer a more in-depth house tour focusing on all the gory details of the cult on Wednesday and Fridays, and as always, you can purchase books, documentaries, and paraphenalia about any of the spots on our tour back at our flagship store. For now, please look to your guidebooks for the name of our next stop on the Real Hollywood: True Crime tour, only a short twenty minutes away. If anyone has any music requests for the drive, just holler!”

He starts the engine, and the truck leaves the cul-de-sac.


	55. Chapter 55

**OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
! livetweet thread for renjun’s january 2022 solo event/fanmeet

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
we’re in line now im so nervous omg ndnfmnfsnf flew all the way to korea for this… renjun.. babe...

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
in the building… ill try and take pics for u guys too but i just realized i forgot my powerbank so we’ll see

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
waiting for him to come out they’re playing his mv and nct’s mvs STMREAM GRADUATION EVERYONE<3

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
omfg it just went dark i think hes abo

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
HES SO MUCH TALLER IN PERSON THAN IEXPECT??ED WHAT

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
u guys hes soooo much more handsome in person hes so pretty hes like a fairy… this was worth itall

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
btw his hair is BLACK!! rn it looks so good on him ok ok hes gonna sing forget-me-not (best sm ballad? Yes?) and then perform graduation and then do some talking i think and then the fansign part

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
forget me not is literally… when they released timeless i cried a little on the inside but FORGET ME NOT??? LIVE??? the girl next to me just passed me a packet of tissues this is the one time im gonna say i love ncity

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
his voice is so emotional no one does it like renjun… the set design? graphics? lights? idk what theyre called but hteyre so beautiful too i think we’re all sobbing in the audience

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
OK WHAT A BEGINNING renjun just went back to go prepare for graduation perf and the mc is promoting renjun’s role in the space horror movie like we all don’t have his cut memorized… also mentioning the cdramas he did in 2019...

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
NEW OUTFIT ITS SO GOOD U GUYS he’s wearing like a shimmery?? glittery?? turtleneck tucked into black jeans with silver chains like Everywhere this is the most mature stage outfit he’s ever had for graduation i think

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
giving taemin vibes in the best possible way… renjun ace....

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
WAS GRADUATION ALWAYS SUCH A SEXY SONG…

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
dont answer that question with the translated lyrics ill punch u. Dont

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
im so glad god put me on this earth as the same time as huang renjun i really wish u guys could see this right now my life is literally being changed

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
the way we all went from crying out of sadness to crying in awe and maybe a little bit of repressed horny? renjun has the range

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
he just went backstage again to change but the mc’s not talking this time he’s not even onstage… kinda weird but ok i mean he wasn’t a great mc in the first place tbh….

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
okay hes back… why does he look so serious omg

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
u guys

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
wtf

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
renjun is quitting being an idol???

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
hes leaving entertainment entirely????

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
no no no what

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
a lot has changed in my life recently and unfortunately i can’t be the same renjun you guys deserve to see. this hurts me so much to say, but i wanted to let you all know first, before the official announcement, because you’re so important to me

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
i cant give u the details now but i hope youll understand someday that this is for the best and i hope you can continue supporting the rest of nct. thank you all for allowing me to chase my dreams and feel all your love and support its meant so much to me

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
but i have to go now thank you for everything

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
what

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
why is this happening whats going on im so scared and freaked out

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 104d  
hey guys sorry for all the fear and drama this thread caused. i don’t really know what happened or why renjun said he’s leaving but all we can do as his fans is respect his decision and understand that this is the best thing for him now. hopefully the official release will come out soon and clarify everything.

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 105d  
muting this now but my dms are open if anyone wants to talk

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 72d  
Oh god…

 **OT7 FOREVER** @dreamczenn · 71d  
hi please stop interacting with this thread renjun looked like he was okay and perfectly healthy at the event he didn’t mention anything about the c*lt there please just respect his and my privacy thank you


	56. Chapter 56

February 26th, 2043

Renjun Huang  
126 Old Clyde Park Rd,  
Livingston, MT

Dear Renjun,

I heard the documentary came out last week. I know you probably don’t want to see it, and I don’t know if you’ve fixed your TV since it last broke, but I thought you should know that it’s out there now. That’s why you should see some new deposits in your bank account soon, anyway. I don’t know what else to say about it, but I wish I had the words. You know this, but — there are a thousand, a million things I wish I could do better when it comes to you, Renjun. I am both terrified and excited to see what they've said in Calabasas Manifest… because I know it won’t be the truth. I know I’ll cry if I watch it. Maybe I shouldn’t.

If I see it on the plane I’ll tell you how awful it was, and how the flight attendants gossiped about me as I used up every damn tissue they had.

We still have a couple months of shooting to go, but I’ve done most of my parts already. The Himalayas are beautiful, but I think I’m getting a little too old for action movies. Probably should’ve thought that through before I accepted the role, shouldn’t I? I think you would like it, though. Lots of snow! In the morning I see the sun rise and the way it hits the slopes — the colors are so vivid, Renjun, it feels like every day I’m reminded how wonderful it is to be alive. I always wish you were here with me, that you could see it too. We could stand there and paint the mountains and drink hot tea to warm up again after we’re done.

If you feel up to it, I’d love for you to come visit. I’ll pay for the tickets and everything.

Well, it’s not like you’re missing out on snow in Montana. Nevermind.

As always, Renjun, I love you and I miss you. Please think of me until I come back. Visit the cat for me? And tell me what you want for your birthday? I’ll get you socks again if you don’t. Anything at all is fine, if it’ll make you happy.

Yours forever,  
Mark


	57. Chapter 57

**Mark Lee  
**From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**Mark Lee** (born August 2, 1999) is a Canadian actor, singer, and screenwriter based in the United States.[1] Born in Canada but spending much of his childhood in New York City, Lee began his career by appearing on the children's television series _Barney & Friends _(2006–2009). In his teens, he rose to prominence for his role as _Jeffery Jung_ in the _Emmy Award–_ winning _Disney Channel_ television series _Kick It!_ (2010–2015).

After a brief departure from acting, Lee transitioned to cinema, gaining praise for his role as Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films such as _Spider-Man: Homecoming_ (2020), _Avengers: Infinity War_ (2021), _Avengers: Endgame_ (2022), and _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ (2023). Lee has since appeared in numerous feature films, particularly science-fiction films, such as _Event Horizon 2110_ (2021), _The 7th Sense_ (2025), _Neuromancer_ (2031), and the _Resonance_ series (2029-2044), which he also helped write.[2]

Outside of acting, Lee has ventured into music; he released his debut single, "Rookie" in 2016, which charted at 31 on the US Billboard Hot 100. He also recorded numerous songs as his character Jeffery Jung for Disney. He is also known to have auditioned for South Korean entertainment agency SM Entertainment as _Kick It!_ was ending[3], but in 2022 claimed he had no interest in pursuing music, especially in South Korea’s idol business.[4]

Contents [hide]

1 Early life  
2 Career  
2.1 2005-2010: Early work  
2.2 2010-2016: Breakthrough with Disney, music career  
2.3 2020-2030: Transition to adult roles, box office success  
2.4 2030-present: Screenwriting debut, subsequent success  
3 Personal life  
3.1 2016-2020 Career suspension  
3.2 Relationships  
3.2.1 _Calabasas Manifest_ (2043) claims  
4 Philanthropy  
5 Filmography and accolades  
6 References  
7 External links


	58. Chapter 58

June 3rd, 2043

Mark Lee  
127 Old Clyde Park Rd,  
Livingston, MT

Sorry I didn’t check my mail. With all the snow piled up it’s too annoying to go down to the end of the mailbox just for a few pieces of paper… I’ve read all of your letters now, though.

Anyway, I know you just got back ~~yesterday~~ two days ago but since it’s warm enough to go outside now let’s have a picnic in the garden. The melons might be ripe, and bring the snacks you brought from Nepal, I want to try them.

Here’s a message for you to practice your Chinese. It’s the last line of a poem I’ve been thinking of recently. It might be difficult because it's poetry, so if you don’t get it I’ll explain to you when you come over:  
你知道，飞翔在高高无人的天空，  
那种迷醉，那种从未有过的迷醉。

P.S  
I liked the socks. They’re very soft. I’ll wear them to the picnic so you can see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for sticking through everything! i know this ending probably isn't at all what you're expecting, but it's important to me in its own way : ) if there's enough interest i'd be willing to make some kind of explanation/q&a post somewhere, i'd especially love to go into all the wayv/side-character lore i have in my head hahaha
> 
> the poem referenced is 风筝火鸟 / the burning kite by ouyang jianghe

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to contact me or ask questions on [twt](https://twitter.com/_huiai) & [cc](https://curiouscat.me/uglyfics)
> 
> please leave a comment or kudo if u enjoyed, but my personal ao3 love language is comments/tags in the bookmarks!!


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